Category: Business Financing

5 Tips to Help You Qualify for a Business Credit Card

The temptation to use personal credit to pay for business expenses can be tempting for many small business owners—particularly when other small business financing is so hard to come by. Nevertheless, you should avoid the temptation. Using your personal credit cards, for example, to pay for business expenses can actually damage your personal credit score,…

Leasing vs. Buying: What Makes Sense for Your Business?

You don’t need to be a construction company that uses heavy equipment or a manufacturer who needs machine tools to take advantage of equipment leasing or an equipment loan. Almost any equipment required to do business can qualify—including computers or even a pizza oven. Think of equipment with a high dollar value that is considered…

Understanding Common Small Business Loan Terms

There’s a lot that goes into choosing the right small business loan. In a previous blog post we talked about some of the common qualifying criteria associated with a small business loan, today we’re going to talk about some of the common loan terms, typical loan amounts, and how long it takes to get funds…

How to Find the Right Business Loan

There are more business loan options available today than ever before. Nevertheless, knowing where to look and what to look for among traditional lenders, online lenders, non-profit lenders, and crowdfunders can be confusing. Today we’re going to talk about some of the basic qualification criteria to help you focus your search in those places where…

Small Business Loans: Convenience and Capital

I’m not convinced there’s a one-size-fits-all business loan that meets the financing needs of every business. I do believe there are some pretty compelling reasons why online financing options are a good fit in certain circumstances: 1. Convenience: It’s no secret to any small business owner who has ever sat across the desk from their…

Video: Tips for Running Your Small Business Better (Part 1 of 4)

When we asked business owners like you how they viewed small business financing, we overwhelmingly heard two things: Most business owners are not aware of their financing options Banks don’t do a great job of explaining what financing options are out there Well, we heard you loud and clear. We’re taking steps to demystify the mystery…

Small Business Loans and Bad Credit?

While it’s true, a good personal credit score is an important metric small business lenders use to evaluate a business owners credit worthiness, a less-than-perfect credit score doesn’t rule out a loan provided other metrics look good. Before you start looking for loan, make sure you have a handle on these four things: 1. What…

When You Need to Get a Business Loan Fast

There are times when a small business owner doesn’t have the luxury of weeks or months to find a small business loan for his or her business. Sometimes an opportunity to purchase inventory at a discount, launch a marketing campaign, or even deal with a crisis happens so quickly they need access to capital right…

Getting a Small Business Loan—What You Need to Know

At OnDeck (learn more about our business loans here) we’ve delivered over $2 billion to businesses since we started making small business loans in 2007. After talking to all of those business owners—and countless others—many tell us they wish that had known how to better prepare for the search for a loan. With that in…

OnDeck is Expanding in Canada: Welcome to Our Canadian Neighbors

Since 2007 we’ve delivered over $2 billion to businesses all across the United States in more than 700 industries and have been lending in Canada since 2014. Today we’re announcing that OnDeck will now be offering loans up to $150,000 (CAD) to the approximately 1.1 million small businesses in Canada. Small business is the lifeblood…

Put Friends and Family Business Loans in Writing

According to the Pepperdine Graziadio School of Business Management’s most recent Private Capital Access Index for Q1 of 2015, small business financing success rates for loans from friends or family remain very high for business owners seeking financing. 68 percent of the business owners surveyed who sought funding from a friend or family member found…

Is a Business Debit Card a Good Idea?

San Francisco startup, Bento’s co-founders Farhan Ahmad and Sean Anderson, think their new prepaid MasterCard (that acts like a debit card) is just the ticket for startups whose employees purchase equipment, supplies, services, or company travel. The card is designed to help small business owners put limits on employee cards and manage their spending. The…

Where Do Startups Really Get the Money to Start?

If you’ve put your faith in what I call the “Myth of the Shark Tank,” you might be surprised at where most start-ups get the cash they need to start. “During an event in Austin on Monday, the Kauffman Foundation outlined research dispelling some of the most common myths that distort America’s idea of the…

3 Likely Reasons Your Business Loan Application Got Rejected

While the economy is improving and many small business owners feel optimistic about the future, it can still be a challenge to access the financing they need to fuel growth or fund working capital. Not all lenders look at the same criteria when evaluating whether or not they’ll approve a small business loan, but here…