Why I built this

Small business owners get talked over during the biggest financial decision they'll make all year. I watched it happen from the inside, at some of the biggest names in the business. Fundangle is what I built instead.

What usually happens when you apply

You fill out one form, and within a day your phone stops being yours.

Your application fans out to lenders you never picked. Sometimes before you've finished filling it in.
Nobody tells you where it went. You can't opt a lender out of a list you were never shown.
A credit pull happens that you weren't warned about. People are told a soft check will run, then find a hard inquiry sitting on their report.
Then the line goes quiet. Documents go in, a week passes, calls and emails get no answer, and eventually a denial arrives with no reason attached.
If you already have funding on the books, it gets worse. Every call becomes someone selling you another position instead of fixing the two you already have.

None of that needs a villain to explain it. Brokers get paid on the volume of files they submit, so submitting is the thing that gets optimized. Whether you ended up with the right product is somebody else's problem.

Where I learned this

I've spent my career explaining money to people who were being talked over.

Teach for America I taught. You can't hide behind jargon in a classroom. If the person in front of you doesn't understand it, that's your failure, not theirs.

NerdWallet Consumer finance at scale. The job was taking products that were designed to be confusing and making them plain enough to act on.

Lendio One of the largest small business funding marketplaces in the country. I saw how a file actually moves, which lenders say yes to what, and where the process quietly stops working for the borrower.

What those jobs gave me is familiarity. I know what the inside of this looks like, and I know how much of it never gets explained to the person doing the signing.

What I do differently

These are structural choices, not promises. You can check every one of them against the rest of this site.

Your file goes where it fits

Lenders publish what they'll actually fund: revenue minimum, time in business, position, industry. I match your file against that before I send it anywhere. Fewer submissions, and your information doesn't end up parked at eleven companies that were never going to say yes.

How the lender network works

No credit surprises

Nothing at the top of this process touches your personal credit. A hard pull happens on the lender's side, at the offer stage, after you've decided to move forward, and you'll be told before it happens.

Read the full disclosure

If you're already stacked, you get the math

Two or three positions open, and the only thing anyone offers is a fourth. I'll run the consolidation numbers and tell you when the answer is to fix what you have. Sometimes the answer is that you shouldn't take anything right now.

How consolidation math works

Your application becomes your status page

You can see where your file is without emailing to ask whether anyone's looking at it.

Start an application

How I get paid

The short version

The lender pays me when your financing closes. You never pay me a fee, upfront or at any other point.

That gives me a bias, and you should know exactly what it is. I get paid when a deal funds. So here's how I keep that from steering you:

I show you total payback in real dollars before you decide anything. I tell you when a cheaper product fits your situation, even when it pays me less and takes three weeks longer. And I tell you when the right move is to take nothing at all.

Who you're actually talking to

Me. Steve Gowa. One person works your file from application through offer.

That's a real limit and I'd rather say it plainly than dress it up as a feature. There's no queue and no rotating rep. Nobody is going to hand your file to whoever happened to pick up. If you reach out, a person answers, and it's the same person who knows your file.

You can reach me on the contact page.

What I won't do

I won't sell your information to data brokers or unrelated advertisers. Your details go to the parties working to fund your request. Here's exactly who touches your data.
I won't quote you a number I can't back up. An estimate gets labeled an estimate. A range gets labeled a range.
I won't call revenue-based funding a loan. It's a purchase of a portion of your future revenue, it carries no stated interest rate, and the difference changes what you actually pay. The distinction, explained.
I won't push you into a position you don't need. If another advance makes your month worse, I'll say so.
I won't promise you an approval, an amount, or a date. Only the funding lender decides those, and anyone telling you otherwise before underwriting is guessing.

Two minutes, and you'll see a ballpark before anything else happens.

See what your options look like

Rather ask something first? Contact me directly or read how your data is handled.