AFO · Pre-revenue / startup
Capital before there's a coverage story to tell.
Pre-revenue businesses get told ‘no’ by every conventional lender — there’s no operating history, no coverage, often no hard collateral. What works at this stage is non-dilutive grants and refundable tax credits, advisory-plus-funding programs like IRAP, and equity (when the round is the right capital event). The non-dilutive layer goes first because every dollar of it is a dollar you don’t dilute the cap table to raise.
Idea, pilot, or pre-product-market-fit
What makes this stage distinct
- SR&ED + IRAP + SDTC + regional dev = the non-dilutive first layer.
- Angel introductions modelled against the non-dilutive alternative.
- Equity raised only when the round is the right capital event.
How the capital stack works at this stage
Pre-revenue / startup businesses, in practice.
SR&ED is the workhorse for pre-revenue technical companies. CCPCs get 35% refundable on the first $3M of qualified expenditures, with provincial top-ups stacking on top. The refund lands cash, which self-finances the next year’s R&D — a critical lifeline before revenue arrives. Even pre-revenue businesses with technical-staff payroll can usually claim, provided the work addresses real technological uncertainty. The CPA scopes the eligible expenditure pool before the work starts.
IRAP pairs financial assistance (up to 80% of internal technical salaries on the eligible project) with an NRC industrial technology advisor. The advisor matters as much as the funding at this stage — they see the technical roadmap, the commercialization plan, and the broader Canadian R&D landscape. SDTC funds clean-tech development and demonstration projects; Regional Development Agencies fund local-economic-impact projects. The non-dilutive stack here can routinely cover 40–60% of a pre-revenue technical company’s first 18–24 months.
On the equity side, angel introductions and equity crowdfunding are the realistic pre-revenue routes. Institutional VC routes through the dedicated Venture Capital module — usually a Series A conversation after the business has proved something. At this stage, the CPA models the cap-table impact of an angel round against the non-dilutive alternative: every $100K you raise as equity costs more than $100K of grant capital because the equity dilutes future rounds too.
7 programs in the catalog · 2 live
Programs that fit pre-revenue / startup businesses.
Curated by underwriting profile, not by tagging. Each card links to the program profile. Coming-soon programs are surfaced honestly: the screener routes there with a consultation CTA instead of a self-serve apply link until the integration is wired through.
Federal refundable tax credit on eligible R&D salary, materials, and contractor expenditures.
Federal funding plus advisory for technical innovation projects in Canadian SMEs.
Federal funding for the development and demonstration of clean technologies.
Regional Development Agency Programs
Coming soonFederal regional programs (ACOA, FedDev Ontario, PrairiesCan, PacifiCan, CED-Q, CanNor).
Angel & Strategic Equity Introductions
Coming soonCurated introductions to angel investors, family offices, and strategic partners for early-stage capital.
Equity Crowdfunding
Coming soonPublic retail equity raises through securities-regulated crowdfunding platforms.
Provincial Digital Media Tax Credits
Coming soonRefundable credits for interactive digital media development in Ontario, BC, Quebec, and others.
Common stacks at this stage
The combinations a CPA usually assembles for pre-revenue / startup businesses.
A stack combines two or more of the programs above into a single capital-structuring answer. Each card names the programs AND the role each one plays inside the combination.
- 3 layers
SR&ED + IRAP
SR&ED and IRAP are the two workhorses of Canadian R&D funding. They cover overlapping eligible expenditures but work through fundamentally different mechanisms — SR&ED is a refundable tax credit claimed in arrears against the corporate return; IRAP is a contribution program with pre-approval and draw-down funding. Run together on the same project, the two programs fund a meaningful share of a Canadian tech company’s technical labour. The trap is double-claiming the same hours: IRAP cannot pay for time also claimed as SR&ED, and the timesheet discipline matters.
Read the stack
- 6 layers
Clean-tech grant stack
Canada has built one of the deepest federal funding stacks in the world for clean technology, but the programs don’t self-orchestrate — each has its own application, eligibility, and matching-capital rule. The skill is layering them coherently so the project carries the lowest blended cost of capital without disqualifying itself from any individual program by stacking-rule conflict. Done well, a Canadian clean-tech project can pull 40–60% of total project cost as non-repayable contributions plus refundable tax credits, with the balance covered by senior debt or strategic equity.
Read the stack
Other stages
Different stage, different stack.
The capital available to a pre-revenue business looks nothing like the capital available to a $25M-revenue operating business. The stages below trace the progression — and the programs that move from “not yet” to “cheapest dollar” as the business matures.
- 11 programs
Early-revenue
Under $5M revenue
Early-revenue businesses sit in the gap between “too young for the bank’s credit committee” and “past needing pure equity.” The right stack draws from instruments that underwrite on something other than five years of audited financials: CSBFP (because the government guarantees the risk), equipment finance (because the asset is the security), factoring (because the AR is the security), RBF (because the recurring revenue is the structure), and the same non-dilutive layer that funds pre-revenue technical work.
Explore the stage
- 15 programs
Growth
$5M–$25M revenue
Growth-stage businesses face a structural mismatch: trailing cash flow doesn’t support the size of the next round of capital the business actually needs. The right stack is layered — senior debt sized on the pro forma post-expansion run rate, ABL for working-capital growth, mezzanine where the senior layer tops out, equipment finance for asset purchases, and the non-dilutive stack underneath the project.
Explore the stage
- 11 programs
Established
$25M+ revenue, mature operations
Established businesses get bespoke capital, not catalog products. The senior facility is negotiated rather than priced off a grid; the ABL covers a real, sized AR + inventory base; mezzanine and private credit lend on covenants tailored to the situation, not a credit-box checklist. The CPA’s role at this stage is structuring the stack — total leverage, blended cost of capital, covenant headroom through the projection — before the term sheet is signed.
Explore the stage
Match the stack to the stage, not the other way round.
Twenty-minute call. Bring the business profile and the project; we’ll walk through which programs at this stage fit, which grants and credits stack underneath, and how the structure should evolve as the business grows.