Questions We Get Asked All the Time
Learn more about our hybrid approach
Learn more about our hybrid approach
Who is Upper90 and how do you partner with companies?
Our job is to be the preferred partner for early stage, capital intensive businesses looking to retain more ownership and finance growth more efficiently. We focus on businesses with a specific use of proceeds that generates high return on assets and profitable unit economics that can support credit earlier. Additionally, we help later stage companies who need to solve complex capital challenges.
What is your investment strategy?
As a hybrid fund, we invest 90% credit, 10% equity in disruptive fintech, supply chain, commerce, and marketplace businesses. We work with founders to identify stable parts of a company where credit can be utilized earlier to finance growth more efficiently.
Our operating thesis at Upper90 is that it’s not how much you raise, it’s how much you own. We exist to help founders grow more efficiently with less dilution.
What is your investment process and how long does it usually take?
We move quickly and can close/fund in a month. The process begins with an introductory call to learn more about the business, team, product, unit economics, and capital needs.
From there, we schedule a business deep dive to learn more about the product differentiation, distribution, and customers. We also do a financial deep dive on the operating model, asset tape, flow of funds, and unit economics. We then take the idea to our partners and our investment committee before going back to the company to present a summary of terms to align on key business points.
We close the vast majority of the term sheets we offer. We believe the best response is a yes and the second best is a quick no.
How is Upper90 different from other credit and venture capital firms?
Upper90 invests credit and equity together in high growth technology businesses. We believe alignment is critical and want to sit at the same side of the table as the founders we support.
We only invest in companies we believe will be large, enduring businesses, but we also accept that not all great companies are destined for hypergrowth. Founders and investors can achieve great outcomes without requiring unicorn valuations.
Initial credit facilities can save more than $150M of dilution for founders and early investors. Founders typically face ~20% dilution through seed rounds and 50% through Series B. Upper90’s credit facilities give founders another tool for growth.
What size checks do you write? What stages do you invest?
Upper90 leads with credit along with equity for alignment in Seed - Series B startups with predictable revenue and collateral. Initial credit facilities range from $5 - $30M, with smaller initial equity investments.
We can scale our credit facilities to $50M+ and look to lean into our winning companies in subsequent equity rounds.
Opportunistically, we’ll invest in later stage companies with bridge capital needs and other special situations.
Do you work with other lenders? Do you do mezz or venture debt?
We like to be the first institutional lender for companies we back. We prefer to be senior lenders and help scale the early phases of growth to prepare for later stage capital markets. As the company scales, we have a deep bench of lending partners and fund investors to provide larger capacity at lower costs of capital.
What advantages do we have with Upper90 that we wouldn’t elsewhere?
Upper90 founders retain an average of ~30% more of their company. You can learn more about our hybrid approach here.
How do you support your portfolio companies?
We roll up our sleeves to support our founders across capital markets, go-to-market, partnerships and talent. For example, we’ve helped our portfolio with their go-to-market strategies, customer introductions, syndicating larger credit facilities as the company scales to lower the cost of capital, and preparing companies for bank debt with underwriting, audit, tax and supporting key hires.
How should I get a hold of someone at Upper90?
Reach out to Billy@upper90.io and Conor@upper90.io