DebtStackA Founder’s Guide to Debt Capital
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Lender update skeleton

Quarterly baseline; monthly during ramp or turbulence. Lenders read these comparatively — keep the section order stable.

Quarterly baseline; monthly during ramp or turbulence. Send to current lenders, prospective lenders, and the funds that said "come back with more data." Keep the section order stable — lenders read these comparatively, quarter over quarter. (Part 10 covers the why; sample figures below are placeholders.)

[Company] Lender Update — Q_ 20__

1. Executive summary

Five bullets max. Growth AND problems. If the quarter was bad, say so in bullet one — your reader has your loan tape; they already know.

2. Wins

New partners/channels/products launched; structural improvements (risk-sharing arrangements, new data sources, senior hires). Two or three items, each with a number.

3. What's not working

The trust-building section. For each item: what missed → root cause → remediation → revised date.

Example: "Invoice-product volume ran 20% under plan. Driver: Partner X delayed their marketing launch from April to July. Remediation: launch completed July 10; joint campaign live; we expect recovery to plan by September."

4. Originations: actual vs projected

Monthly table, by product, against the plan previously shared. Show the misses. Add one line of variance commentary per product.

MonthProduct A actualProduct A planProduct B actualProduct B plan
Apr$410k$500k$180k$150k
May

5. Portfolio performance

Delinquency by bucket; loss/charge-off trends; vintage curves (chart); anything drifting, flagged by you first. Covenant distance table — each covenant/trigger, current value, threshold, headroom:

TestCurrentThresholdHeadroom
30+ DPD ratio3.1%6.0%comfortable
Min. liquidity$2.4M$1.5Mcomfortable

6. Outstandings: actual vs projected

Same format as §4 — this is the lender's collateral view.

7. Pipeline — with stage definitions and the graveyard

Stages with numeric gates (e.g., Pilot → Ramping (>$250k/mo) → Scaled (>$1M/mo) → Paused → Exited). Table of active names with stage movements since last update — including the ones that went backwards, paused, or died, with one honest line each. A pipeline where nothing ever dies is a pipeline nobody believes.

8. Corporate

Cash and runway; equity plans and timeline (volunteer it — Part 5); key hires/departures; anything covenant-adjacent.

9. Asks (if any)

If an amendment conversation is coming, seed it here, early, with the analysis attached (Part 10: go early, bring the fix).

Attachments: current loan tape · financials · vintage charts