The Agenda
March 31, 2023
Breakfast
Opening Remarks
Presentation
A Technical Breakdown of Venture Debt Underwriting Models
- Underwriting models – Sponsor-driven vs. company fundamentals-driven vs. structured deals
- Similarities and differences / Pros and cons
- The benefits of properly structured venture debt to companies, management teams, investors, and lenders
- Use cases of different venture debt models for win/win/win results
Chief Operating Officer and Chief Investment Officer
Horizon Technology Finance
Speaker
Presentation
The State of the Venture Debt Market
- Current trends including what recent bank failures mean for the venture debt market
- Discussion of sector-by-sector loan performance
- Understanding the headwinds in the industry for both lenders and borrowers
- Sizing up current market sentiment, especially among equity investors
- How are things different today than they were only one year ago?
Panel
Exploring Revenue-Based Funding From a Company’s Perspective
- Overview of how Revenue-Based Funding works
- How RBF compares to other venture debt approaches for funding your company
- What to look for in a Revenue-Based Funding partner?
- Insights from company founders who have used RBF to scale their businesses
Networking Break
Fireside
Exploring the Latest Trends and Opportunities in Venture Debt Financing
- Are we now in a lender friendly market?
- Are FinTech’s a threat?
- Post SVB landscape?
- Early stage vs late stage?
- Are big platforms like Black Stone, KKR, etc. serious about participating?
- Impact on fund raising?
- Is ESG is a factor?
Fireside
Highlighting the Differences Between Venture Debt Use in Banks vs. Funds
- Banks may have lower cost of capital
- Funds may not be as constrained by banks in the amount they can invest
- Who is typically more supportive – banks or funds?
- Understanding financial covenants
- Due diligence: just as important for investors as companies
Panel
Fundraising For Venture Debt Funds
- Explaining the value of your strategy to prospective investors
- Working with pension fund managers
- Promoting private credit venture debt funds as an attractive but separate asset class
- Focusing the fund on a specific market sector to attract savvy investors
- Partnering with VC firms: pros and cons
- Biggest concerns that equity investors and companies have when raising venture debt
Lunch
Panel
How the Collapse of Silicon Valley Bank will Impact Venture Debt Moving Forward
- Strategies SVB used to dominate the VC ecosystem for venture loans
- Sizing up the competitive landscape of non-bank lenders aiming to fill the void
- How venture debt investments will change in the wake of SVB’s failure
- Discussion of the logical buyers of SVB’s venture loan portfolio
- Analysis of why the current banking crisis will likely drive down private valuations
Founder, Managing General Partner & Chief Investment Officer
Applied Real Intelligence
Panelist
Fireside
Venture Debt From the Borrower’s Perspective: Winning a Deal
- Discuss borrower considerations for selecting a venture debt partner
- Important elements in deal negotiation and execution
Fireside
Alternative Financing for Venture Debt
- Overview: Slowdown in VC capital opens path to alternative financing
- Best practices and capital strategies for financing venture debt businesses
- Operating and institutional capital perspectives on obstacles & opportunities
- Why lending decisions should be data-driven to increase speed to funding
- Managing rising risk in a rising rate environment
Networking Break
Presentation
How to Avoid Big Venture Debt Financing Mistakes
- Planning for a successful close in advance of a venture debt deal
- What’s different about venture debt diligence vs. venture capital diligence
- When and how to set up your data room
Presentation
Lender Landscape: The Current State of Small Business Lending by FinTechs
- Why FinTechs are typically faster to fund
- How your company builds credit when other scoring models are taken into account
- Streamlined operating structure removes many pain points for SMBs
- Blockchain systems and other tech enhancing security
- How FinTechs offer greater flexibility and customization to the small business customer
Presentation
Understanding the Targeted Marketing of Business Credit Cards to VC-Backed Startups
- How to define the addressable market for targeting business credit cards to startups
- What’s the best channel strategy to reach the target
- What are the key differentiators in the value proposition to attract this unique segment
- How to develop brand advocates to support social media marketing
- How to make credit decisions when your target market customers are pre-revenue
Closing Remarks
Cocktail Reception (Sponsored by Barnes & Thornburg)
The Agenda
It’s been our philosophy since we started hosting conferences in 2003: “The program always comes first.” When we develop a new event, you can bet that it’s on the cutting-edge. Here are just a few of the unique presentations and panel discussions we’re developing for The Venture Debt Conference 2024.
- State of play: Market size of the venture debt market, growth projections through the next year
- Why venture debt is an increasingly viable way to raise capital in the current market as private equity and venture capital firms tighten their purse strings
- Know your lender: What to look for in a venture debt partner
- A Need for Speed: Why direct lenders can almost always cut a check faster than banks
- How pre-revenue companies can turbocharge business growth with venture debt
- Why venture debt is typically less than half the cost of giving up equity
- Understanding the venture debt underwriting process: Creditworthiness and assessment of equity sponsors
- A word about warrants: how they impact venture debt deals
- Caveats of venture debt financing — from high interest rates to equity expectations
- Understanding debt structures for working capital vs. growth capital
- Timing considerations: Raising debt alongside equity, raising between rounds, raising to fund an acquisition – and the unique considerations of each approach
- Common venture debt options: equipment financing, accounts receivable financing, and term loans
- How companies use venture debt to extend their cash runway and minimize equity dilution
- The lender landscape: Commercial banks, specialty finance firms, alternative lenders
- Exploring revenue-based funding
- Understanding senior loans vs. subordinated debt structures
- Royalty-based funding for life sciences companies
- Using hybrid securities including convertible bonds, preferred stock, and debt with warrant kickers
- Alternative lending structures, including lines of credit, bridge loans, factoring, and merchant cash
advances - How macro credit conditions and economic indicators impact venture debt markets
- The role of market participants: Lenders, underwriting and credit companies, loan servicers, and loan brokers
