It’s Not Debt, It’s Better: an Interview with Harry Hurst of Pipe

It looks like factoring, it looks like debt, but it isn’t any of those things. It’s a new tradeable asset class with revenue contracts as the atomic unit. Businesses have been waiting for this for a long time. We’ve already maxed out the first lever you can pull to fund growth: issuing equity shares, off of the promise of what could be. Now, Pipe i... See more

John Street Capital did a deep dive comparing Pipe to the three traditional types of external financing in Recurring Revenue: The Rise of an Asset Class. Based on his assumptions, he found that Pipe was the cheapest cost of capital for a fast-growing, subscription-based business.

Pipe is that better way. Even better than debt.

Pipe is in the business of creating Business-Funding Fit. Its skills -- pulling in companies’ financial data via APIs, assigning ratings based on that data, attracting investors, providing liquidity, and managing seamless ongoing financial transactions -- will be extensible to many more subscription-based business models over time.

Pipe solves the problem that both Hsu and Danco alluded to: right now, the way that startups fund themselves doesn’t match their business models or maturity. Product-Market Fit gets most of the headlines. Product-Founder Fit is an up-and-comer. But Business-Funding Fit -- funding each business with the right type of capital -- is an equally importa... See more