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Comment by rsweeney21 | Hacker News Reader

Would your service work for this scenario?

We charge $20K-$50K for our services after they are completed. (We do contingent recruiting.) Some customers ask if they can pay over time. We don't want to offer that because we're already billing after all the work is done, so it makes our cash flow even worse than it already is.

What I want is to be able to say, "Sure, use this service and they will allow you to make payments over time." We get our money up front and they make payments to this service provider. They pay extra to the service provider for the convenience of making payments.

I don't want to factor. I want the burden of collection on someone else. Like Affirm for b2b.

Could we use your service to build something like this into our platform? Who is responsible for collecting?

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yup! we can support both consumer & business borrowers. "pay-later" solution is a quite popular application of our product!

one callout here - it sounds like you're looking for someone to take on the balance sheet/collection risk, which is not something we do. we're saas only. our customers keep upside from offering credit (additional revenue, interest income, higher LTV, greater GMV etc) and also the balance sheet

The main sticking point why trad cashflow factors don't do this is probably a lack of a good company credit score system + mechanisms for enforcement.

I've had clients ask whether they can pay large (7 figure!) invoices on credit. Ah... nope. :)

Dun and Bradstreet is a very old company that does just that and has an API. Though of course you have to pay for it

https://developer.dnb.com/#/home

You probably want something like Lendflow

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26347962

Sounds like you, or someone, could build affirm for b2b, using this platform, and you’d be customer #1.

indeed, funny u say that! some of our customers are in fact replacing affirm ;)

For this use case, you may want to look at Lendica's (https://golendica.com/partners) "Checkout" product. Leader in "embedded lending" space for B2B.

really exciting to see what @Pier is building! Some thoughts for below:

Seems you guys are focused on end-to-end software tools and will rely on the business taking credit risk (and getting the balance sheet) instead of providing the loan yourself. Is that correct?

If that's the case, one thing to look out for is it's quite challenging to get your customers (paying $10-20k / mo) to trust your underwriting standards/origination tools. First question will be: why can you do it better?

One model that worked well is Opyn.eu in Italy that offers the software but has an agreement to buy any "loan" back from the creditor over the course of the payment.

Hope that helps and wish you the best of luck!

thanks for sharing! yup you're right the balance sheet part. we currently don't offer debt capital/take on the balance sheet. we learned firsthand from our last company that if u start by offering balance sheet, you'd attract the wrong kind of players/customers to partner with.

fyi most of our customers have their own balance sheet or debt facility and it's not an issue for them. they prefer this flexibility too bcus every business model is a bit different, so there's not rly an one-size-fits-all like debt setup.

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