This post was originally produced for Forbes.
Debt crowdfunding site Dealstruck recently announced an arrangement with peer-to-peer loan fund Direct Lending Investments. In order to better understand the import of the arrangement, I reached out to the leaders of both companies to get a sense of what the deal means for social entrepreneurs and other seeking growth capital.
Ethan Senturia, the CEO of Dealstruck, noted, “For the first time, a crowdfunding partnership is addressing the actual lending ecosystem, offering small businesses not only a term loan product, but now also a working capital line of credit (which most small businesses have asked for but no platform has offered until now). This allows not only high growth startups to benefit from crowdfunding, but also the main street businesses that have revolving capital needs.”
He went on to say, “Dealstruck and DLI are making a prime product (revolving credit line) available down-market to businesses that don’t meet the credit or siz…