When The Music Stopped: How The Pandemic Threatened the History and Culture of Austin, Texas
November 15, 2020
In April of this year, Threadgill’s – a legendary Austin music venue and beer joint that, in the 1960s, famously launched the career of blues singer Janis Joplin — turned off the lights and pulled the plug on its sound stage.
A converted gasoline station, Threadgill’s had been a rollicking music scene since 1933 when musician and bootlegger Kenneth Threadgill secured the first liquor license in Texas after Prohibition. His juke box was crammed with Jimmie Rodgers songs and Threadgill himself famously sang and yodeled Rodgers’ tunes.
For generations of students at the University of Texas, Threadgill’s was a rite of passage.
“The first time I went to Threadgill’s was in the fall of 1968, when I was a freshman at UT,” recalls Perry Raybuck, a songwriter-folksinger and retired government worker who, as a member of the Southwest Regional Folk Alliance, played the stage in 2018. “It was the beginning of an education for me,” he adds. “I had been a Beatles and rock n’ roll kid and it opened me up to different music styles. I became a convert.”
In 1981, Threadgill’s was taken over by another acclaimed club owner, Eddie Wilson, who previously had been the proprietor of the Armadillo, a fabled music venue. Wilson began to actually pay musicians – Threadgill had compensated them mainly with free cold beer – and installed a circular stage.
It was Threadgill’s and an assortment of funky clubs and stages with names like the Soap Creek Saloon and Liberty Lunch helped put Austin on the map as “The Live Music Capital of the World.” The city remains home to the widely acclaimed television program “Austin City Limits” on PBS and the internationally renowned South by Southwest festival, which was canceled this year amid fears of a “superspread” of the coronavirus.
“Live music,” says Laura Huffman, chief executive at the Austin Chamber of Commerce, “is why people come here. It is a central component of Austin’s cultural and economic life.”
Omar Lozano, director of music marketing for Visit Austin, the city’s main tourism organization, says: “We have close to 250 places in the greater Austin region where you can hear live-music, although it’s closer to 50-70 on any given night. During South by Southwest, no stone is left unturned — everything becomes a stage: parking garages, grocery stores, housing co-ops. There are also four or five stages at the Airport, which helps liven up the mood.”
But that identity is being put to the test. So far this year, Austin has lost a raft of live music venues. Among those joining Threadgill’s in honky-tonk heaven since the pandemic struck are Barracuda, Plush, Scratchhouse, Shady Grove, and Botticelli, all of which provided niche audiences to both established musicians and up-and-coming acts.
The roller-coaster ride of government mandated shutdowns followed by a limited re-opening in the spring and another shutdown since July fourth is making life miserable and untenable for both club owners and already hardpressed musicians and artists, says Marcia Ball, a piano player and blues singer.
Ball, who was named by the Texas Legislature as “2018 Texas State Musician” and whose musical style was once described by the Boston Globe as “mixing Louisiana swamp rock and smoldering Texas blues,” told AltFinanceDaily: “There was already a limited amount of opportunity for musicians to perform and monetize their work in Austin, so it has always been necessary to travel to make a living. But we still depend on a thriving local scene, and we’re losing that when key venues like Threadgill’s disappear.”
Adds Graham Williams, a prominent Texas promoter of touring bands: “These venues and bars are vital to the music ecosystem. Local bands and cover bands need hangouts, even if people are not buying tickets. They’re places to play every night of week.”
While unheralded outside the Austin scene, the local music joints were often a port-of-call for out-of-town promoters and nightclub owners checking out Austin talent – “most notably Barracuda (which) had super-popular acts and was like a hipster garage venue,” says promoter Williams. “A lot of touring bands played there on their way up.”
A July study by the Hobby School of Public Affairs at the University of Houston found that the city’s live music industry is in desperate straits. Sixty-two percent of live music spots and 55% of the bar-and-restaurant businesses reported to researchers that that they can endure for no more than four months, making them the most vulnerable of 16 industries surveyed.
And the situation has become “even more ominous” since the report was published, explains Mark P. Jones, a political scientist at Rice University in Houston and a lead researcher on the Hobby study. “That survey finished polling two hours before all bars and restaurants closed back down,” he says. “Everything people were saying was when bars were at 50% capacity. That’s a best-case scenario.”
Austin’s experience amid the Covid-19 pandemic mirrors what is occurring nationwide as bars, nightclubs and music halls in myriad cities and towns experience similar trauma. In Seattle, Steven Severin is co-owner of three nightclubs – Neumos, Barboza and recently opened Life on Mars – all in trendy Capitol Hill, the hub of the city’s club and live-music scene. He reports that he is barely holding on thanks to some help from the city and a sympathetic landlord who is “a big music advocate.”
“He knocked down the rent a little bit,” Severin says of his landlord, but the situation is dire. “We just had a fifth venue, Re bar, close at the end of August,” he says. “It was a punch in the gut. This could be me.”
The Bitter End in Greenwich Village is also keeping its head above water despite not opening its doors since March. The nightclub has a storied past: owner Paul Rizzo recounts that it is where pop singer Neil Diamond got his start and where “everyone from Curtis Mayfield to Randy Newman” has performed since its opening in 1961. But the club is silent now since the pandemic overwhelmed the city’s hospitals and made New York the epicenter of sickness and suffering during the spring. So far the club is getting help from a landlord’s forbearance and loyal musicians.
Peter Yarrow (the “Peter” in the bygone trio Peter, Paul and Mary), donated a streamed concert to patrons who contributed to a fundraiser that raised more than $50,000. And grateful local musicians also put on a benefit directing people to a Go Fund Me page on the Internet that raised another $16,000. “We’re a major venue for local musicians,” Rizzo says. “We should pull through.”
It’s in their self-interest for artists to do whatever they can to keep the doors open at a club like The Bitter End. “These days because of the last two decades of declining record sales — live music is the bread and butter of a musician’s income,” says journalist Edna Gundersen, a recently retired, 28-year-veteran of USA Today. “That’s true whether it’s a local entertainer or an international superstar.” (Gundersen earned the reputation as Bob Dylan’s favorite journalist; it was she who scored his only interview after he won the Nobel Prize for literature in 2018, publishing his eccentric musings in the The Telegraph of London and breaking the news that he would indeed accept the prize.)
“Touring has been crushed,” Gundersen adds, “and festivals have been canceled. So people doing the circuit and clubs are gone for all intents and purposes. Streaming — while initially up — is down because people aren’t listening to music in the gym or in their cars. Physical record sales are also down because people aren’t going to stores. All of this is just killing musicians.”
The Paycheck Protection Program, the multi-billion, multi-tranche aid package for small business which Congress authorized as part of the CARES Act in March, has provided some funding for the live-music and entertainment industry. But because of the PPP’s requirements that only 40% of the funds can be spent on rent, mortgage and utilities, which are major expenses for nightclubs and music venues, the program has largely been a disappointment.
Hoping to win attention and assistance for their plight from the federal government — “We’re the first to close and the last to reopen,” Severin says — live-music entrepreneurs like himself and Rizzo and more than 2,800 club-owners and promoters across the country have banded together to form the National Independent Venue Association.
Their membership includes independent proprietors (no corporate members allowed) of saloons, cabarets and concert halls as well as theaters, opera houses and auditoriums from every state plus the District of Columbia. To help plead their case with Congress, the organization hired powerhouse law firm Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, the largest Washington, D.C. lobbying firm by revenue.
NIVA also blanketed Congressional offices with two million letters, e mails and correspondence generated from hordes of fans and performers. Among the many scriveners are a slew of boldface names: Mavis Staples, Lady Gaga, Willie Nelson, Billy Joel, Earth Wind & Fire, and Leon Bridges. Comedians Jerry Seinfeld, Jay Leno and Jeff Foxworthy have also penned notes to lawmakers championing NIVA’s cause.
Their message: without federal funding, 90% of independent stages will go under over the next few months. “The heartbreak of watching venues close is that once a building is boarded up, it’s not going to be a music venue any more,” warns Audrey Fix Schaefer, communications director at NIVA. “They operate on thin business margins to begin with and they’re too hard to develop.” For touring acts, each city stage is “an integral part of the music ecosystem,” Schaefer explains. “When artists finally do get back on the tour bus, they might have to skip the next five cities and go on to the sixth.”
Thanks to the bi-partisan efforts of Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Senator John Cornyn (R-Texas), NIVA’s campaign has gotten traction. The unlikely couple have teamed up to author a rescue bill, known as the Save Our Stages Act. If enacted, it would establish a $10 billion grant program for live venue operators, promoters, producers, and talent representatives.
The legislation would provide grants up to $12 million for live entertainment venues to defray most business expenses incurred since March, including payroll and employees’ health insurance, rent, utilities, mortgage, personal protection equipment, and payments to independent contractors.
NIVA’s chief argument for the legislation is coldly economic rather than sentimentally cultural. The organization cites a 2008 study by the University of Chicago that spending by music patrons produces a “multiplier effect” for the broader economy. For every dollar spent by a concert-goer at a live performance, the Chicago study determined, $12 in downstream economic activity occurs.
Explains Scott Plusquellec, nightlife business advocate for the City of Seattle: “You buy a ticket to a show and the direct economic impact of that purchase is that it pays the artist, bartender and the club itself as well as the band, advertisers, and promoters. The indirect economic impact,” he adds, “is that after you bought the ticket, you went to a barber shop or a hair salon to look good that night. You might also have dinner, go to a bar for a drink and tip the bartender. That’s the whole the idea of a ‘multiplier.’”
In Austin, that economic logic is an article of faith with city burghers, asserts Lozano of Visit Austin, who reports that live music in the capital city is roughly a $2 billion industry. To promote live music, the tourism bureau sponsors such endeavors as “Hire an Austin Musician.” That program, Lozano says, “sends musicians around the U.S. to represent us during marketing season.” In another promotional campaign, Visit Austin arranged for singer-songwriter Julian Acosta to play a gig at travel agents’ offices in London when Norwegian Air inaugurated direct flights between London and Austin in 2018. “The U.K. is one of our best markets,” he reports.
Even so, efforts by the business community and the City of Austin have failed to stanch much of the industry’s bleeding. According to its website, the city has disbursed $23.7 million in loans and grants to small businesses and individuals, but slightly less than $1 million of that has gone to live-music and performance venues, entertainment and nightlife, and live-music production and studios.
In late September, The city of Austin’s Economic Development Department released a slide show breaking down how the $981,842 in industry grants and loans – of which $484,776 was provided by the federal government under the CARES Act – were awarded. Most top recipients appeared to be well known nightclubs and entertainment venues downtown or close to the city’s inner core.
The Continental Club on South Congress – a key fixture in the hip “SoCo” strip just over the Colorado River from downtown – appeared to do best. It picked up $79,919 from two programs: $40,000 in the CARES-backed small business grants program, and $34,919 from the city’s Creative Space Disaster Relief Program. Other clubs receiving $40,000 in the small business grants program included Stubbs, The Belmont, Cheer Up Charlies and the White Horse. (For a full list go to: http://www.austintexas.gov/edims/document.cfm?id=347299)
Joe Ables, owner of the Saxon Pub, a major Austin venue for jazz – blues singer Ball hailed it as one of several important Austin clubs “that sustains creative endeavor, especially for songwriters” – was vexed that his grant application was denied by the city “with no explanation.” Ables also voiced dissatisfaction that the city paid the Better Business Bureau a 5% administration fee to handle $1.14 million in relief funds, including determining which applicants were approved. “What would they know about live music,” he says.
Even for clubs that received city largesse, it hasn’t been nearly enough to sustain them. The North Door, which got $15,240, closed for good on September 11 (an ominous day — the anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.)
Meanwhile, enough clubs and venues were left out in the cold that club owner Stephen Sternschein could tell AltFinanceDaily just before the slide show was released: “I’ve heard talk of a $21 million grant program but most people I know haven’t seen a dollar of that.”
Sternschein is managing partner of Heard Presents, an independent promoter and operator of a triad of downtown clubs that includes the spacious Empire Garage, which features hip hop and urban jazz, and has space for 1000 music-goers. A member of NIVA, Sternschein describes efforts by both the state and local governments as “woefully inadequate.” Says he: “People are looking to the federal government for answers.”
The diminution of places for musicians to ply their trade is a double edged sword. If Austin loses its luster as a hot music town, it puts the city’s overall economy in jeopardy. Explains Jones, the Rice political scientist: “The difficulty for Austin is that it could lose its comparative advantage. Unlike restaurants, movie theaters or sports events, which people can find just as easily in other cities, the Austin music scene draws capital and revenue from across the country.
“You can go out to dinner in Waco,” he observes, referring to the mid sized Texas city between Austin and Dallas best known as home to Baylor University and its “Bears” football team, fervent Baptist religiosity, and unremarkable night life. “Music brings in revenue to Austin and to Texas that wouldn’t otherwise come here.”
In addition, Jones says, the large presence of “artists, creative types, and freelancers” helps make Austin a strong selling point for “brain industries” to attract talent from the East and West Coasts. “It supports the technology industry by making it easier to recruit employees to live there,” he says. “Austin is an alternative to Silicon Valley. People who are progressive might be hesitant to come to conservative, red-state Texas from California but they’ll come to Austin because it’s culturally cool.”
Austin, which embraces the slogan “Keep Austin Weird,” is on the verge of becoming just like every place else in Texas. Should it relinquish its flavor and charm, it could discourage many of the assorted business groups and professionals from keeping Austin on their dance card as a popular destination for meetings, conferences and get-away trips.
Howard Freidman, managing director at Bluechip Jets, a broker of private luxury aircraft, had an earlier career as a technology industry executive. Partly drawn by his previous experiences with the city, Freidman moved to Austin earlier this year. “It had the same coolness and weirdness of New Orleans — but also with the professionalism of a tech city,” he says.
“Whenever we’d come here,” Freidman adds, “the music was always integral to the Austin scene. Even when you’d go to private parties you’d end up downtown at the club scene on Sixth Street. Austin was always a place everybody liked going to.”But as Austin has steadily been morphing into more of a high-technology center than a live-music town, it’s experiencing a silent exodus of musicians and artists who are being gentrified out of their apartments and Craftsman duplexes. Displacing them are software engineers, website designers and the like, their sleek BMWs and black, tinted-glass SUVs glistening in the parking lots of steel-and-glass corporate centers.
Many of the technology firms – including such needy companies as Samsung, Intel, Rackspace, Facebook, and Apple – have each received tax breaks, grants and subsidies worth tens of millions of dollars from a variety of local jurisdictions. Not only have the city of Austin and Travis Country been beneficent, but adjacent county governments and the state of Texas have provided abundant support. A 2014 study by the Workers Defense Project, in collaboration with UT’s Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, reported that the state of Texas showers big business with $1.9 billion annually in state benefits. Most recently, officials with Travis County and a local school district granted Tesla more than $60 million in tax rebates to build a massive “gigafactory” southeast of town near Austin-Bergstrom International Airport.
To house the burgeoning cohort of “knowledge workers,” there are condominium conversions, tear-downs, high-rises and other forms of frenetic real estate development which, in their train, bring higher property taxes, steeper rents, and unaffordable housing.
Add in some of the country’s most snarled traffic, dirtier air, and a growing homeless population, and members of the artistic community are increasingly decamping for smaller satellite towns like Lockhart and San Marcos. Others in the diaspora are abandoning Texas altogether for more hospitable locales like Fayetteville Ark., Asheville, N.C., or Olympia, Wash. “Whatever made anybody think this would be a better town with a million people,” laments blues singer Ball. “This was a perfect town with 350,000. Now we’ve got Silicon Hills, Barton Springs are cloudy, and drinking water’s going to be scarce. Why is this supposed to be better?”
The drop-off in live music and the belt-tightening by musicians is causing third-party pain for people like veteran Austin journalist and publicist Lynne Margolis, whose national credits include stories for Rolling Stone online, and radio spots for NPR. “The public relations aspect of my work has dropped away because artists can’t afford to pay,” she says, “and music journalism is falling by the wayside. It’s hard not to feel to like a double dinosaur.”
Led by bars, restaurants and music venues, on many days the solemn departure of small establishments has the business news sections of Austin newspapers reading more like the obituary page. One hardy survivor is Giddy Ups – a throwback honky-tonk on the town’s outskirts that advertises itself as “the biggest little stage in Austin” – promising “just about everything,” says owner Nancy Morgan, including “country, blues, rock, bluegrass, and soul.” For the past 20 years Giddy Ups has developed a devoted following of musicians and patrons while fending off hyper modernity.
“It has an untouched, back-to-the-seventies, cosmic cowboy vibe,” says local musician Ethan Ford, a guitarist and bass player whose trio, The Slyfoot Family, has graced its stage. “It’s a time capsule,” Ford adds.
Morgan declined to disclose her annual receipts but in 2019, she reports paying out $188,000 in wages to employees, $72,000 to musicians, and $185,000 in combined sales taxes to the city of Austin and to the state. Despite her status as a taxpayer, employer and entrepreneur, she has received no state aid and is disqualified from receiving city pandemic assistance programs, meager as they may be, because she’s located in an extra-territorial jurisdiction.“
Nancy still bartends most nights and does all of the booking,” says Ford. “Her knowledge of the Austin music scene could fill a couple of books. I know a decent fistful of Austin venue owners and she’s about the only one that hasn’t given up, been forced out, or just retired. She’s a dynamo.”
Unless the cavalry arrives for Morgan and other holdouts, though, their musical days may be numbered.
Editors Note: Threadgill’s didn’t make it. The venue “has closed for good, the property has sold, and the building will eventually be torn down,” according to information disseminated for its Last Call Music Series. Its November 1st grand finale show featured Gary P. Nunn, Dale Watson, Whitney Rose, William Beckman, and Jamie Lin Wilson.
The building will be replaced with apartments.
What Would a Biden White House Mean for The MCA Industry?
November 14, 2020
What do small business finance companies think about the reality of a Biden White House? Will there be dramatic regulatory changes, massive new government stimulus, or significant differences in coronavirus policy?
“Not likely,” according to the head of two funders we spoke with. The CEOs of Greenwich Capital Management and Spartan Capital Group seemed to agree that overall, not much would change.
“We don’t expect any major changes to the industry to MCA,” Frank Ebanks, Spartan Capital owner, said. “I don’t think it would be any different than what we saw and experienced under Trump. Some states, some federal organizations attempted to regulate the industry, that’s already on the way, and that might continue: I don’t see it picking up any intensity.”
Ebanks’ firm has been around for four years, funding deals of up to $2 million. In that time, Ebanks has seen states like New York and California pass lending regulation and renewed activity at the CFPB, but never a fed-wide push to take on small business lending.
Nathan Abadi of Greenwich Capital Management, believes there might be short term benefits under Biden.
“In the short term, I think it’s going to be pretty good for people in our industry because under a Biden administration, we’ll see more bailouts go to SMBs than we would in a republican administration,” Abadi said. “If small businesses get bailed out, that means they can make their payments, and everyone is winning.”
He was less optimistic in the area of regulation, however.
“It’s necessary for our industry to have some vetting process and some regulation, as you saw happen with Par recently,” Abadi said. “All these other companies are taking in private investments from multiple investors, not necessarily accredited, and the money kind of goes into a black hole.”
Abadi further said that he thought while regulation is good for those who play by the rules, Democrats can go overboard.
Ebanks, meanwhile, thinks there is saftety in being a B2B business.
“Transactions between two individual companies are hard to regulate, especially when it comes to contracts,” Ebanks said. “That will stand and be around for a long time regardless of the government or who the president is.”
Ebanks continued to point out that an incoming administration would avoid changing anything that might hurt the economy now more than ever.
“I think that the President-Elect will put teams together that will attack the coronavirus situation aggressively and will neutralize it rather than try to live with it,” Ebanks said. “It’ll be tough for a month or two. And after that, it will be sort of back to normal, with just heavy aggressive localized actions.”
Joe Camberato Named CEO of National Business Capital & Services
November 9, 2020
November 9, 2020, Bohemia, NY – National Business Capital & Services, the nation’s leading FinTech lending marketplace which streamlines the application and approval process for small business owners, today named Joe Camberato CEO. He succeeds James Webster, who has exited the company to pursue new endeavors.
The announcement comes as the COVID-19 crisis has crippled small businesses across America. Not only are business owners challenged with the overwhelming stress of meeting near-term financing demands simply to survive, but they are also tasked with re-imagining how to best position their businesses for growth in the post pandemic ‘new normal’.
“Through booming and challenging times, National’s priority has always been to serve as the go-to source for small businesses to find competitive financing options, revenue-generating services and consultative support to help them at every step of their growth journey,” said Camberato.
“When it comes to small business loan approvals, banks are highly conservative, tending to lend an umbrella when the sun is shining. With COVID-19, the sun is not shining. We recognize how crucial it is to provide access to competitive financing options to help businesses survive, but they also desperately need help to rebuild and grow.”
In a recent survey of small to mid-sized businesses by CBIZ, over half (51%) of respondents reported a significant decrease in sales due to the pandemic. Smaller businesses have been disproportionately impacted, with nearly half of businesses with 1-4 employees reporting a significant or severe impact, and 37% of businesses with 20-49 employees noting a significant or severe impact.
In taking reins as CEO, Camberato is steadfastly committed to National’s vision to Innovate the Way Entrepreneurs Grow by offering essential resources beyond just financing. His plans include enhanced business growth consulting and coaching offerings, which he anticipates will be a dire post-pandemic need, but is currently a significant gap across the competitive landscape.
Michael Gerber, a mega bestseller who was named “The World’s #1 Small Business Guru” by Inc. Magazine, commended National’s efforts toward empowering small business owners by providing streamlined access to capital, among other game-changing resources.
“I’ve admired Joe since the day we met. He shares my mission to transform the state of small business and has unmatched knowledge of small business lending practices. His personal success building a scalable business, and passion for helping entrepreneurs and small business owners invest their efforts in the right areas to create sustainable, growth-oriented companies have been invaluable as we work together to co-author our new book,” says Gerber.
Gerber is currently collaborating with Camberato to write “The E-Myth Money Book”, which will educate small business owners about the various avenues they can take to obtain and successfully utilize small business financing while growing their businesses.
As one of National’s original founders and previous President, Camberato spearheaded significant technological innovations, implemented process enhancements, and helped build an amazing company culture on his mission to simplify the previously laborious business financing process for small business owners, securing over $1 billion in financing in the process.
Now, business owners can apply in one simple place and securely connect their bank accounts to receive tailored financing options in minutes, with funding following in as little as a few hours.
Beyond streamlined technology and processes, Camberato credits National’s success to its award-winning team and applauds their role in helping business owners get back to business amid the pandemic.
“By taking the time to understand business owner challenges or opportunities, our amazing team has established the National brand as a trusted source of capital and counsel. I couldn’t be prouder of my team’s dedication to helping small business owners, but also for their significant role in helping our clients overcome the COVID-19 crisis and get back to business. They rally behind our mission to be the trusted resource business owners turn to for financing, revenue-generating services, and business coaching and will play a pivotal role as we add new offerings to help businesses not only survive but thrive and grow.”
Camberato regularly shares his insights about FinTech lending, access to capital and small business growth strategies through his seat on the Forbes Finance Council and his YouTube channel, GrowByJoe. He is also an active member of the Young Presidents Organization (YPO) and is actively involved in giving back, locally and nationally.
ABOUT NATIONAL BUSINESS CAPITAL & SERVICES
National Business Capital & Services is the #1 FinTech marketplace offering small business loans and services. Harnessing the power of smart technology and even smarter people, we’ve streamlined the approval process to secure over $1 billion in financing for small business owners to date.
Our expert Business Financing Advisors work within our 75+ Lender Marketplace in real time to give you easy access to the best low-interest SBA loans, short and long-term loans and business lines of credit, as well as a full suite of revenue-driving business services. We strengthen local communities one small business loan at a time. For every deal we fund, we donate 10 meals to Feeding America!
CONTACT:
Matt Carrigan
press@National.biz | www.National.biz
National Business Capital & Services
1 Corporate Dr, Suite 202, Bohemia NY 11716
Toll Free: (877) 482-3008 | Fax: (631) 446-6016
SOURCE National Business Capital & Services
StreetShares Stops Lending Directly to Small Businesses, Records $10.7M Annual Loss
November 1, 2020
StreetShares, the online lender known for its focus on veteran-owned businesses, is no longer lending directly to small businesses, the company disclosed last week. This became effective as of October 26.
“We still offer lending products to small business customers via our LaaS clients,” the company said however.
“As of June 30, 2020, 47 banks, credit unions, and alternative lenders have contracted to use our Lending-as-a-Service (LaaS) small business financing technology.”
It defined LaaS as:
“Since the launch of LaaS, the Company has offered several LaaS packages, which include various products and services depending on the package, such as: online product presence for small business lending, web design collaboration, client-branded landing page, intelligent online loan application for small business borrowers (client-branded or StreetShares-branded), decisioning platform, loan analytics platform, and small business loan marketing services. Depending on the LaaS package, either the Company or the LaaS client will originate, underwrite, and service the small business loans. Our LaaS products and services are available in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.”
Financially, StreetShares’ June 30 fiscal year-end report revealed a massive $10.7M loss on only $4.5M in revenue. Despite the impact of covid, these figures are actually in line with (and perhaps even better than) historical performance. The company had a $12.3M loss on only $4.4M in revenue for the fiscal year prior, for example.
“Beginning in March 2020, we experienced an increase in late payments and requests from our borrowers for payment deferments. As a result, there has been an increase in predicted losses on our loan portfolio and we expect to observe an increase in our charge-off ratio in the near-term; however, we are unable to predict a long-term trend in our charge-off ratio. Beginning in March 2020, we instituted a deferment program that permitted our small business borrowers to defer loan payments as necessary due to the COVID-19 pandemic. We worked closely with our borrowers and have exited all of them from the deferment program as of this filing. We also provided, and continue to provide, certain borrowers with payment plans with reduced payments as necessary. The payment deferments or modifications made as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic consisted of short-term payment deferrals or reduced weekly payments.”
Earlier in the month of October, StreetShares announced they had secured a $10 million round of funding from Motley Fool Ventures, Ally Ventures (the strategic investment arm of Ally Financial), and individual fintech angel investors.
Greenbox Capital® Advocates For Fair Lending to Women- and Minority-owned Businesses in CFPB Panel
October 19, 2020Miami, FL: Greenbox Capital® announced it is serving as a Small Entity Representative (SER) to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) that is responsible for amending the Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA) protecting women-owned, minority-owned, and small businesses looking for financial assistance. Section 1071 of the Dodd-Frank Act amends the ECOA by requiring certain data be collected and submitted to the Bureau to protect these types of businesses.
“It’s an honor to be selected to the industry panel providing feedback on section 1071 of the Dodd-Frank Act ensuring fair lending laws to women- and minority-owned businesses”, said Greenbox Capital CEO Jordan Fein. “Over 2 million businesses across the U.S. are either women or minority owned and it’s vital they can secure funding as easily as non-minority owned businesses.”
Greenbox Capital, an alternative lender, serves small businesses in all industries across the United States, Puerto Rico, and Canada with the working capital needed to grow. Greenbox Capital is committed to supporting clear, secure, and fair financing solutions and is an active member of the Small Business Financial Association (SBFA).
For more information visit, www.greenboxcapital.com.
LendingClub Formally Ends “Peer” Aspect of Its Business, Proceeding With Radius Bank Acquisition
October 7, 2020
LendingClub is finally ending the “peer-to-peer” aspect of its platform for good. Earlier today, the company announced that it would cease offering and selling Member Payment Dependent Notes effective December 31st.
“Ceasing the Retail Notes program will allow LendingClub to redeploy capital and improve platform efficiency, enabling the company to help even more members as LendingClub progresses towards closing the Merger and becoming a bank holding company,” the company said in an official statement. “All Retail Notes outstanding as of the date the Retail Note program is ceased will be unaffected by the cessation of the program. Accordingly, with respect to such outstanding Retail Notes, LendingClub will continue servicing the corresponding member loans and information regarding such Retail Notes will remain viewable in the applicable Retail Note investor accounts.”
LendingClub rose to fame with its peer-to-peer model nearly a decade ago, but using retail investors to fund loans has been eroding over time. ‘Peers’ Are Almost Gone From Lending Club’s Funding Mix was the title of a February 2019 AltFinanceDaily story that highlighted this trend, for example.
Meanwhile, the focus on Radius Bank is a reminder that the announcement made nearly 8 months ago is still a work-in-progress.
“In connection with and in furtherance of the Merger, LendingClub has been in regular contact with federal banking regulators and, on September 25, 2020, filed an FR Y-3 application with the Federal Reserve to become a bank holding company,” the company said. “LendingClub plans to offer a full suite of products as a bank. This includes a high-yield savings account that will be initially exclusively available to its existing retail investors and will offer a compelling interest rate, as well as other products that take advantage of the marketplace to allow its customers to both pay less when borrowing and earn more when saving.”
Radius Bank was the subject of a major AltFinanceDaily Magazine story in 2017 titled Tech Banks: Will Fintech Dethrone Traditional Banking?
Kapitus CEO Speaks on Success of Rating Reaffirmation
October 6, 2020
When lending companies faced the tightest squeeze on capital since the great recession, many ran into trouble. Kapitus, having survived 08′, met 20′ with the same discipline that helped them navigate the pandemic.
“Our whole industry was put on a credit watch downgrade, and it’s very exciting that we were upgraded, reaffirmed to the original rating,” Kapitus CEO and founder Andy Reiser said. “Most of the companies, our peers defaulted and went into what’s called rapid amortization and did not make it through to keep their securitization.”
Reiser was happy to report that Kapitus received a rating affirmation from Kroll Bond Rating Agency (KBRA) on Friday. KBRA has removed the Kapitus securities from a Watch Downgrade.
Back in March, the businesses that Kapitus and their competitors funded across the country, faced state mandated shutdowns. Many customers were suddenly unable to make the loan, MCA, or equipment payments that they had been able to make for years.
For lenders that bundled and securitized the loans they made, the value of those loans was called into question.
On March 30, KBRA placed the ratings of 29 securitizations representing $2.1 billion from 10 SMB lending firms on a “Watch Downgrade” due to the economic downturn.
To overcome the warning, Kapitus reigned in and focused on helping their customers. Reiser cited the addition of Jeff Newman from Citigroup to manage the risk team as an example of how the firm has been focused on funding responsibly for years.
“We focused on strong business practices and keeping the portfolio strong, and it paid off,” Reiser said. “We never stopped, we were not lending at the same velocity that we did pre COVID, but we never had a day that we didn’t fund a new deal.”
Reiser said that during the pandemic’s height, the team took a lot of long nights working on new products. One was a “step renewal” that allowed clients to pay installments and build up to the full payment, to make sure they were not overwhelmed. Kapitus also offered extended periods for their healthcare loans, up to 36 months, Reiser said.
For companies like Kapitus, a questionable rating could lead to a rapid amortization event: a sudden call to liquefy the bonds and give back investor money. For some, an event like this will spell the end: most firms don’t keep hundreds of millions or even billions on hand to give back principals in a moment’s notice.
Reiser said out of the ten securities on credit watch, only one other was reaffirmed, due to a renegotiation of terms that bond investors had to agree on. Kapitus made no negation but was reaffirmed due to the success of their business practice, Reiser said.
The securitization was initially issued for $105 million in June 2018, and expanded to $160 million last December, in three classes with a senior class rating of “A.”
Reiser believes that the pandemic, like the ’08 recessions, will see some consolidation and strong companies prospering in a displaced environment.
“I think COVID will teach a lot of other players that were very aggressive in coming down to this market that it’s not so easy,” Reiser said. “I think some of the banks and the alternative lenders that were more eager to come into this market may not be so aggressive at least for a while.”
Amid Pandemic, Small Businesses Pivot to Sell Personal Protective Equipment
September 23, 2020
A number of small businesses—including those in the merchant cash advance industry—faced with little or no way to make money for months—have pivoted to selling personal protective equipment.
It’s no wonder businesses across the U.S. have shifted gears. With the pandemic raging, and consumers and businesses trying to return to some sort of normalcy, there’s high demand for these products, causing even businesses that previously had no connection to them to spring into action.
“It’s not my forte; I had to pivot just to make sure I could stay afloat before things turned around,” says John DiCanio, founding partner of Direct Merchant Funding in Bethpage, N.Y.
This past spring, at a time when everything in the MCA business stopped, he heard from a merchant in the medical supply field that masks were becoming very important. The merchant connected him to a contact in Hong Kong from whom he was able to buy hospital-grade and non-medical grade masks and sell them to local hospitals, local businesses and others.
DiCanio says he did it for a short time only—two months—which was enough to tide him over under his
regular business started coming back. Mask-making is still a big business and a lot of people are still doing it, but he prefers to stick to merchant cash advance, which he’s been doing for around 15 years. He says business has picked up enough that he no longer has the need to do anything on the side—and he hopes it stays that way.
Many funding industry participants are still selling these types of products, but it’s somewhat of a hush-hush business. Not everyone wants to talk about it for any number of reasons, including embarrassment and fear of looking weak to customers and business connections. Even so, small businesses that pivoted say they are doing the best they can to stay afloat—and there’s no shame in that.
Kat Rosati, founder of Apparel Booster in Riverside, Calif., a product development agency for luxury and socially conscious brands, began hand-sewing masks to help support her business that had been hit-hard by the pandemic.
She has manufacturing partners all over the world, and production was at a standstill for her various products. She couldn’t import fabric needed for the company’s various projects and a lot of production partners were forced to close. Luckily, she had a connection to a fabric mill in Pennsylvania that focuses on antimicrobial products that was willing to provide her with material.
She hired temporary workers to help her make masks, which she’s producing at a rate of about 150 a week. She sells them to consumers and small businesses. The revenue has helped defray overhead expenses, among other things. “It hasn’t been super profitable, but it’s definitely helped keep the business alive,” she says.
She had to furlough her four-person team because she can’t afford to pay them without regular client work coming in. Her husband, who works in the restaurant industry, was also furloughed. So whatever money she can bring in, helps. “I’m watching small business owners around me that haven’t made any kind of pivot close left and right,” she says. “The fact that I can keep mine alive makes it worth it for me.”
To be sure, small businesses pivot for all sorts of reasons, and it’s not always because they are struggling. Francis Perdue, a publicist and business consultant in Birmingham, Ala., began selling PPE products including gloves, kn95 masks, surgical masks, customizable cloth masks, child and adult-sized shields, suits, gowns and the Xenon Fever Defense machine which uses AI technology to measure skin temperature and detect potential fever. She says she saw a need for these types of products in local schools as well as in hospitals and clinics in predominantly black neighborhoods. She is still consulting, but doing this as a side gig while the need persists.
Another example is MORGAN Li, a retail and hospitality manufacturer in Chicago Heights, Ill. The company identified the need and opportunity to help businesses remain open or reopen to customers while abiding by new recommendations to support public health. Thus, the company began producing customized social distancing materials including sneeze guards, safety shields, signage and floor graphics for various businesses to remind employees and customers to comply with social distancing requirements, according to a spokeswoman.
More recently, Andy Rosenband, the company’s chief executive, saw another opportunity to help communities prepare for another critical stage—reopening schools. He created a line of personal protective equipment that specifically addresses the challenge of social distancing in schools to keep students, teachers and staff safe.
For some small businesses, the shift is likely to be a permanent one.
JB Herrera, founder of Perceptive Insights a San Diego-based small and medium business consulting and mentoring company, says his firm was growing, but PPE products offer the ability to create a broader impact and are likely to be more profitable than merely a consulting business.
He has clients in China and back in December when things were starting to get bad there, he realized that the problem could spread massively to the U.S., and if it did, 80 percent or more of businesses would be negatively impacted, in his estimation. Using his business expertise regarding supply chains and pre-existing and new contacts, his company shifted gears to introduce in March a line of FDA-registered products designed to create and maintain safe environments. The products include commercial and personal cleaning solutions, masks, light technology disinfectants, air filtration, and personal sanitizing kits.
Even before the pandemic, the PPE market was worth several billion, he says, and that’s likely to grow exponentially over the next five to 10 years. So much so, that he expects the new business line to represent 90 percent of his revenue for the next three years—at least.
“Even after the spike goes away, it’s still going to be a profitable business in its own right,” he says.
