How equipment financing can help your startup scale

The internet has been, for many, the great leveller: anyone with a laptop and an internet connection can, in theory, gain access to all the knowledge in the world and start a global business from the spare room.

However, the reality of scaling a business is rather different. For most startups, bringing on new staff means buying a whole range of tech equipment, from a top of the line laptop to keyboard, mouse, monitor, and the ergonomic chair and standing desk to boot.

Depending on the startup, equipment crucial to operations could also include anything from software to manufacturing equipment.

While the need to scale is a good problem for a business to have, financing new equipment can take a serious hit on cash flow.

The usual route for many a startup is to look for investment to fund growth operations, but Savvy, a provider helping to connect startups to flexible equipment finance for their modern business, offers an alternative with a variety of equipment financing options.   

Bill Tsouvalas, who founded Savvy in 2010, explained startups can seek financing for “anything a business needs to make a profit”.

This includes information technology equipment such as new computers, a server through to a whole data centre, and everything in between.

While equipment finance is most often determined on cash flow coming in, a consultant can work with a startup whose product is still in development phase to find the right deal for them, with Tsouvalas explaining lenders are becoming increasingly flexible in order to cater for different kinds of businesses.

For example, a variety of lenders will assess a startup based on their profit and loss statement in their cloud accounting software. With this in mind, a Savvy consultant can work with startups to help them find a tailored solution from its panel of lenders.

Savvy can also work to ensure startups are able to preserve their working capital and get up to 100 percent of funds with repayments spread over the life of the equipment.

Technology depreciation and planned obsolescence will also be taken into account so startups are never left behind; with a recent survey finding that every five year old computer costs business owners $11,000 per year and that employees 21 percent less productive on old PCs, the ability to take into account depreciation of tech and planned obsolescence is more important than ever.

If your startup is priming to scale up, it’s worth exploring the benefits of equipment financing options with Savvy.