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Go to a small bank. I'm a bootstrapper and I have lunch every couple of months with the owner/ceo of the bank we do business with. They have about 25 branches within their family (under 2 brands).

Small banks still do business the old fashioned way. Credit isn't an issue if your cash flow supports it.

The best (banking) move we ever made was switching from a huge bank to a small bank.

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Fellow self-funded biz here, definitely agree with this. Go with a small local/regional bank. Start small and grow with the LOC. Depending on how involved the loan officer group is, you may get some great CFO-type advise / dashboard review out of it. Even if they're not typically doing hot SaaS businesses, they know the fundamentals and growth stages of small businesses inside and out, regardless of industry.

This is really solid advice. Small bankers are interested in actually banking. I know that sounds silly but the larger "big name" banks are answering to a different master (no I'm not sure who that is, but it certainly isn't the small to medium business customer!)

Just don't get too addicted to that line of credit. If the bank yoinks your ability to borrow when cash is tight, you'll be hurting.

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