{
  "id": 8033788,
  "title": "Exclusive: Fintech Offers Startups Alternative To Venture Debt With A New Model To Finance Customer Acquisition Costs",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/09/17/exclusive-fintech-offers-startups-alternative-to-venture-debt-with-a",
  "topic": "finance",
  "section": "Finance & Markets",
  "published": "2026-09-17T14:00:42.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "Crunchbase News",
    "slug": "crunchbase-news",
    "url": "https://news.crunchbase.com/venture/fintech-alternative-funding-customer-acquisition-skalar/"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "Technology firms traditionally spend considerable sums on customer acquisition, often without guaranteeing sufficient revenue to recoup those costs. To bridge this funding gap, a fintech startup called Skalar has introduced a novel financing model. Based in New York, Skalar provides capital for sales and marketing initiatives, with repayment being tied to the revenue generated by the newly acquired customers. This approach differs from venture debt and revenue-based financing models, as Skalar does not require equity dilution or fixed repayment schedules. Instead, it collects around 1.1 times the amount provided, and only absorbs the shortfall if the expected revenue falls short. Skalar focuses on tech companies that spend between $100,000 and $3 million per month on customer acquisition and have a proven track record of generating more revenue from those customers than they spend. As of now, Skalar has committed to finance over $125 million in sales and marketing spending across seven technology firms within the next year. The company's model is selective, with detailed analysis of transaction data to assess risks and profitability. While there are risks for startups, such as potential accelerated repayment or reduced funding, Skalar aims to mitigate downsides and maintain a low credit risk profile for its financed companies.",
  "summary": "Newly launched Skalar provides startups with capital to fund sales and marketing initiatives in a fairly straightforward, though somewhat unusual model which lets the startups pay it back out of the revenue generated by the customers acquired with that capital.",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}