We make secured term loans to e-commerce and consumer brands — industry agnostic. Generally companies doing $5–30M up to $100M in revenue, in loan sizes from $300K to $5M per tranche. No equity, no board seat, no algorithm deciding your loan amount and other terms.

We want to fundamentally understand your business and get to know your management team. We diligence a company the way an equity investor would — profitability, equity support, sales history, every revenue channel — and then we provide debt in a structure that fits your needs, not just ones we've seen from other companies in the past.

We're industry agnostic within consumer — beauty, food & beverage, apparel, jewelry and accessories, home goods, wellness, and owned retail, among others. See the portfolio for the full list.

There's no single formula for what makes a “good” company or a great fit for Steel. We lend across sectors and growth patterns, to VC-backed and bootstrapped companies, profitable and unprofitable.

We're willing to take the time to learn what “good” looks like for your company, because we'd rather do five loans with you than five loans with five different borrowers. That's how we grow our business.

No. We work with both profitable and loss-making companies. What matters is the full picture of the business and a clear plan for how the capital will be used.

Your business needs to have operations and assets in the USA or Canada. That can be through a US or Canadian subsidiary or entity, so a company headquartered elsewhere may still be eligible.

If your business already generates consistent revenue, using venture equity to fund the next stage of growth is usually the more expensive option — you're giving up ownership to fund things debt can cover. Debt should go toward things with a high probability of generating cash flow for the company; the type and terms should match how you're going to use it.

Generally, no — a well-structured term loan is a normal part of a healthy cap table, and most equity investors expect a growing company to use some debt. We're also VC-agnostic: it doesn't matter to us whether a company has raised money or not. Some of our favorite partners have never raised a dollar.

An ABL lends off a formula tied to your inventory or receivables — if a lender can just take your inventory, sell it, and get their money back, that's what's setting your terms. That formula applies regardless of seasonality: if you're carrying lower inventory in the spring, your borrowing base shrinks, even though that's the more efficient inventory planning tactic. And when you're ready to buy inventory ahead of the holidays, that same low inventory position limits the amount you can borrow with ABLs.

We don't lend off a formula. We look at the business holistically, so we can fund the inventory you need before the busy season, stay flexible through the slow one, and lend larger amounts against the same company.

An MCA takes a cut of daily sales — repayment that speeds up and slows down with your revenue, which can feel like a hamster wheel when growth is exactly when you need cash the most. The repayment period can be very short, the cost can be very high, and the human touch can be non-existent. A Steel term loan has a fixed schedule, agreed up front. Growth doesn't make it more expensive; if anything, it should make you more creditworthy — better terms, not the reverse.

With term loans, you know the schedule from day one, which means you can plan around it instead of watching a repayment amount move with your sales.

Amortizing on a fixed schedule also matches the debt to what it funds, like inventory, marketing or a new channel that generates cash over the loan’s life. When you need more, delayed-draw tranches give you access to additional capital on a timeline we agree on together.

In comparison, a revolving line of credit can sit outstanding, but its availability is usually tied to a borrowing base and typically renewed annually, so the capital you count on can shrink or disappear when you need it most.

With Steel term loans, the amount committed is what you receive.

Individual tranches are generally $300K to $5M, but total facility size can be greater, capped around 20–25% of trailing 12-month revenue. Terms average 15–18 months, up to 2 years, with biweekly payments.

Additional tranches can be pre-committed when you close your first loan, then advanced once a defined condition is met — an equity raise, a large PO, a growth threshold, or simply executing on your plans. Those conditions are agreed up front and written into your loan agreement, so you know exactly what unlocks the next tranche before you need it.

For needs you didn’t plan for, talk to us. Because we stay close to your business through regular reporting and check-ins, we can move quickly on additional capital for a new channel, a large order or a retail opportunity. After we make an initial loan, we expect to be long-term financing partners: about half of our capital in a given year goes to companies already in our portfolio.

No. A fixed schedule means your payment doesn't change because a good month became a great month.

We don't restrict how the capital gets used. You're better positioned than we are to know whether it's best spent on marketing, a strategic hire, an acquisition, or inventory.

No — just a limited “bad acts” guarantee, which is triggered if the Guarantor or Company commit fraud, willful misconduct or certain other enumerated “bad acts.”

Generally 3–4 weeks from intro call to close: a diligence call within days, a term sheet within about a week, and funding roughly three weeks after that, which is largely a result of company review, approvals and negotiations. We move at your pace — if you need it faster, tell us, and we'll devote the resources to make that happen.

Standard diligence items such as financials, operating model, inventory report, AR/AP report, bank statements and corporate documents.

Monthly financials, light check-ins, quarterly update calls and annual tax returns.