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‘Like Family’: How Critical Financing Became One of the Fastest Growing ISOs
When Farmingdale, Long Island-based Critical Financing (CFI) showed up as the 2,671st fastest growing company on the Inc. 5000 list this year, it was a testament to the company’s many years of hard work. Founded in 2017 by its CEO Brandon Garcia, CFI connects small businesses with a variety of unsecured working capital products.
“[Getting that recognition] was great,” said Garcia. “And I think it’s also a testament to the group that we have. It excites the people that work here too. This is a very stressful job, it’s not easy.”
In CFI’s day-to-day, the sales team finds itself competing against multiple companies on almost every deal that comes across their desks. Small businesses regularly put the pressure on them to get the best rate, the fastest funding, or a combination of both. They say this only increases their drive.
“It has definitely helped us in a way,” Garcia said of it. “I mean who doesn’t want a deal that doesn’t have competition, you can kind of take your time with it, right? But I think when there’s urgency, our guys perform better.”
In the very beginning it was just Garcia himself who had worked in the industry since 2012. He was soon after joined by a former colleague, Robert Menzel, and the two set off to really build up a company. That’s easier said than done, especially in a business where trust is paramount. So they looked within their own circle of friends and family to create a solid foundation.
“I felt it was best that we take care of our own,” Garcia said. “Let’s take care of people that we know that are looking for a new opportunity, and we train them the way that we want them to be trained. We want to give that experience and push it over to them.”
Among those they’ve brought on board to their current headcount of sixteen has been Garcia’s own mother, who works as the company’s head processor. And while they are still actively looking to bring on more people, Garcia said that the number of employees isn’t the ultimate metric of success, but rather the abilities of the ones you do have and the relationships they have with everyone else is the key. On this point, CFI is on pace to surpass $100 million in funding this year. It’s because of their continuous progress and results that they finally got the confidence to apply into the Inc. 5000 and were successful in making it.
“To be able to put that Inc. 5000 sticker in your signature, on the website, it just has a different swag to it,” said Garcia’s partner Menzel, “where it just carries a lot of weight, and even the merchants see that.”
When asked if the end goal was to become a lender themselves, both Menzel and Garcia say they’re happy with what they already do now, which is connect the merchants to the most appropriate source.
“While many competitors chase the close, we lead with transparency and real strategy,” Garcia said. “We act as consultants first. Even if a client doesn’t move forward with us, we want them to walk away smarter and more prepared than when they came in.”
“When you are a lender, you don’t really have that close relationship with other lenders because you’re your own lender,” Menzel said. “You’re not talking to them about deals, how to get deals done, ‘what are they doing? What did they change this month compared to what they’ve been doing, what’s working, what’s not.’ I think having those relationships with the lenders and the lenders’ reps, it’s huge and it makes the job fun, because they’re really all great people that we deal with.”
That closeness is what it’s all about for them.
“We are a group of people who genuinely care about each other,” Garcia said. “We’ve celebrated marriages and welcomed new babies. We hang out on weekends, show up for one another, and create a work environment that doesn’t feel transactional.”
The outcome of that are months where the company is exceeding $10 million a month in funding, and they’re now even more fired up after the Inc. 5000 placement.
“You don’t need this massive shop to be successful in this industry,” Garcia reiterated. “It’s really that simple. You just need the right people. You need to be loyal and just really be truthful with everyone. And good things happen. That’s a big thing for us.”
View PostCAPEDGE Appoints Kevin Vendel as Director of Mid-Market Lending & Partnerships
London, UK — October 16, 2025 — CAPEDGE (http://www.capedge.co.uk), the UK non-bank lender specialising in mid-market finance, today announced the appointment of Kevin Vendel as Director of Mid-Market Lending & Partnerships. Vendel will lead CAPEDGE’s engagement with corporate finance boutiques, accountants, and other intermediaries to drive referral-led growth and expand awareness of CAPEDGE’s distinctive lending proposition.
“We’re delighted to welcome Kevin to CAPEDGE,” said David Goldin, CEO of CAPEDGE. “His track record building high-performing teams and scaling mid-market origination via intermediary channels will help strengthen our relationships with advisers and CF boutiques seeking fast, flexible solutions for their mid-sized clients looking for business loans in the range of £500,000 to £3 million+.”
Vendel joins CAPEDGE from TP24, where he served as Commercial Director and led mid-market growth via direct and intermediary channels. Previously, as Head of Sales at FIBR, he developed strong partnership relationships and consistently delivered portfolio growth across SME lending.
CAPEDGE was launched to address a clear funding gap for mid-sized UK businesses seeking loans between £500,000 and £3 million. The lender offers a combination of speed, flexibility, and human-led underwriting, with approvals and funding in as fast as a few days — compared to weeks for other non-bank lenders and months for banks. CAPEDGE provides capital for a wide range of purposes, from supporting growth and working capital needs to acting as a bridge solution for businesses awaiting longer-term facilities or liquidity events.
“CAPEDGE was created to serve a segment of the market that has been historically underserved — established, mid-sized businesses that need quick access to capital without the lengthy processes of traditional banks,” said John Rozenbroek, COO/CFO of CAPEDGE. “Our ability to fund within days — not weeks or months — gives businesses the flexibility to act quickly, whether they are bridging to a bank facility, managing a liquidity gap, or pursuing growth opportunities. With Kevin joining to expand our intermediary network, we’re able to deliver that speed and certainty to even more mid-sized clients through trusted advisers.”
“CAPEDGE is solving a real gap for mid-sized businesses that value speed, certainty, and a relationship-driven approach,” added Kevin Vendel. “I’m excited to work closely with corporate finance advisers, accountants, and other intermediaries to bring that proposition to more mid-sized clients.”
About CAPEDGE
CAPEDGE is a UK-based specialist non-bank lender offering flexible business loans between £500,000 and £3 million to mid-sized companies. Designed to bridge the funding gap for firms underserved by both large banks and smaller non-bank lenders, CAPEDGE emphasises speed, certainty, and partnership.
Built on a strong foundation, CAPEDGE is part of the Capify family — a well-established alternative finance provider that has been supporting businesses in the UK and Australia since 2008. While Capify serves small and growing SMEs, CAPEDGE focuses on larger, mid-market businesses that require more capital and bespoke funding solutions tailored to their needs.
It works closely with trusted intermediaries — including corporate finance boutiques and accountants — to deliver fast, flexible capital solutions that help mid-sized clients grow, manage liquidity, or bridge to their next opportunity.
For more information, visit www.capedge.co.uk.
Media enquiries
press@capedge.co.uk
That Fintech Business Loan Performance Should Help You: How Hansa is Giving Both Borrowers and Lenders a Powerful Tool
“Business owners want to be reported on,” said Henry Magun, founder and CEO of Hansa. “When we do a lot of surveys around this and when we survey small business owners en masse, would they rather borrow from a provider that does report to the business credit bureaus or does not, 85% of business owners say that they would rather borrow from a provider that does report to the business credit bureaus.”
It’s a familiar story: small business borrows from a fintech lender, repays it perfectly, and later on down the road applies for financing elsewhere believing that their previous payment history will support an approval or more favorable terms, only to find out there’s no public record of it at all.
“We hear that all too often,” said Magun. “It’s a very common experience, and that is one of the reasons why we are extremely focused on not only building the back-end pipes to do the furnishment to the bureaus for the lenders and make that process effortless, but also creating a front-end product that makes it a transparent process for the SMBs.”
Hansa, headquartered in New York City, enables lenders to report payment history to the credit bureaus and access existing reports on their customers. The key here is that it’s business credit reporting, not personal. Although most people are familiar with Dun & Bradstreet, Experian and Equifax also have business bureaus specifically for business credit. There’s also consortium-based organizations such as the Small Business Finance Exchange, for example, that take in commercial credit data.
While term loans and cards for SMBs, two rapidly growing products in the fintech space, are their main focus, the Hansa platform can make reporting possible for just about anything.
“We realize that there is such a diversity of product-type in the SMB financing space,” Magun said. “Is it a term loan? Is it a card? Is it an MCA product? You know, are there daily payments, weekly payments, monthly payments? All across the board, we do it all.”
The benefits of reporting business credit are obvious. Lenders can claim that good performance will legitimately build business credit, borrowers benefit from actually building business credit, and lenders can rely on this highly relevant data to drive more informed decisions.
“It’s really about getting the fintech ecosystem towards the future in which companies are focused on supporting financial wellness, and we really view credit furnishment in the SMB space as core to that, ultimately being able to reliably build credit is extremely important for financial mobility, economic mobility because it enables people to [graduate] to bank products and things like that, and being able to take your history with you in order to progress. That’s really important for economic mobility.”
On the flipside, for lenders that have spent years fine-tuning algorithms to predict payment performance outside of traditional credit reports, one area that continues to remain cloaked in obscurity is payment performance with other fintech lenders. Alternative methods, at least within the fintech community, are commonly used to make a best-guess effort, such as employing automated tools to scan an applicant’s bank account deposits with a known list of lender names and then matching them to corresponding bank debits to predict the performance and status of those accounts. But even if one can assess with a high degree of confidence about how those credit lines are performing, it’s not exactly an official affirmation from the lender, and the transaction history might not go far back enough. Besides, these risk assessment methods are entirely personalized to the lender, and don’t necessarily give the business an asset (a universally recognized credit report), that it can furnish elsewhere and benefit from. A business could use a credit report for a trade line or a bank loan or in some other transaction where it could hold weight for them, for example.
“It really is a ‘rising tide raises all ships’ scenario in the sense that in a more mature ecosystem where there’s higher ubiquity of reporting, everyone benefits,” Magun said. “It helps all the funders and creditors on their underwriting processes, and it helps the business owners, the applicants, because it increases the portability of your credit history.”
The usefulness speaks for itself. Hansa, for example, has increased the number of reports that they’re furnishing data on by more than 400x since the beginning of this year. And the lenders can show off to their borrowers what they’re reporting and where it’s being reported to in any manner they wish.
“We’ve started to see really great traction amongst these various players, and we’re really excited to be working with them and it works,” said Magun.
Already they are seeing improved payment rates and increased engagement rates between the borrowers and lenders.
“It’s really powerful,” Magun said, “and SMBs really do care about being able to build their credit.”
View PostManatt Expands Nationally-Recognized Financial Services Group with Addition of Partner in San Diego Office
Gianna Ravenscroft brings deep banking, fintech, nonbank lending and consumer financial services experience to Firm’s Financial Services Group
SAN DIEGO—October 15, 2025—Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, LLP, a multidisciplinary, integrated professional services firm, today announced the arrival of Financial Services Partner Gianna Ravenscroft to the Firm’s San Diego office. With over two decades of experience in consumer and small business finance, fintech, bank regulatory matters, and complex operational and capital markets transactions, Ravenscroft advises leading banks, fintech companies and other nonbank lenders on regulatory, transactional and compliance matters and guides organizations through accelerated growth and high-stakes regulatory challenges. She has also worked with industry-leading companies to bring new financial services products to market, navigating challenging policy and competitive landscapes, and has addressed cutting-edge legal issues for clients as the industry continues to evolve from both a technological and government regulatory perspectives.
“As we continue to build out our national financial services team, Gianna’s in-house leadership and extensive regulatory experience is a tremendous resource for our many financial services clients facing sophisticated financial, compliance and regulatory challenges at every stage of their growth,” said Manatt CEO and Managing Partner Donna L. Wilson. “She also brings a unique national practice with relationships across the country coupled with deep ties in the San Diego business community, making her an ideal addition to our office, led by former U.S. Attorney Randy Grossman.”
With considerable in-house senior leadership experience heading legal and compliance functions, Ravenscroft counsels clients on corporate governance, investor and capital markets relationships, regulatory compliance and product development. She has played key roles in strategic acquisitions, negotiated a wide range of commercial agreements and supported strategic projects, M&A and regulatory initiatives, in addition to conducting regulatory diligence for institutional investors. Ravenscroft has extensively advised banks, fintechs, captive auto finance companies and investors on compliance, lending and bank regulatory strategy and represented clients before federal and state regulators on transactions, applications and enforcement matters. She has also counseled clients on a wide range of consumer finance issues, including FDCPA, UDAAP, SCRA, bankruptcy and regulatory examinations, and worked with clients on merchant cash advances and managing state and federal regulatory matters.
“Gianna’s proven track record advising financial institutions and fintechs on significant transactions, compliance and product innovation, in addition to having a deep understanding of the evolving consumer finance regulatory landscape, makes her an ideal addition to our team,” said Craig Miller, Partner and Leader of Manatt Financial Services. “Strengthening our ability to support clients navigating these related matters, Gianna embodies the collaborative, business-focused approach that distinguishes our practice and will add immediate value for our clients across the country.”
Prior to joining Manatt, Ravenscroft served as Director and Deputy General Counsel for Lending, Banking & Capital Markets at a global financial technology platform, where she led legal strategy for one of the company’s fastest-growing business units. She also served as General Counsel of an alternative finance company and was Associate General Counsel at a digital financial services company offering online banking products. Earlier in her career, Ravenscroft was Managing Counsel at one of the largest global captive auto finance companies, where she advised on legal risks and regulatory requirements across the company’s consumer credit products and services. She has practiced in the Financial Institutions Group at a global law firm and began her legal career at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC).
“Manatt’s unique blend of legal and consulting services, combined with its reputation as one of the top consumer financial services advisors in the country provides an unparalleled platform for me to help clients succeed in today’s rapidly evolving financial landscape,” said Ravenscroft. “I am excited to join Manatt’s dynamic, collaborative team and partner with clients to scale and innovate while helping them address the legal, business and compliance risks that evolve quickly in today’s changing business environment.”
Ravenscroft is the latest financial services arrival to the Firm in the last year, joining other recent hires including investment funds Partner Peter Tsirigotis, leading blockchain and cryptocurrency Partner James Williams and banking and regulatory Special Counsel Hope Adams.
Ravenscroft earned her J.D. from Southern Methodist University Dedman School of Law and B.A. from University of San Diego.
View PostMaxim Commercial Capital Delivered Creative Financing Solutions in Q3 2025
LOS ANGELES, CALIF. (October 13, 2025) – Maxim Commercial Capital (“Maxim”) announced it countered industry trends during the third quarter of 2025 by delivering essential hard asset secured financing to small and mid-sized businesses across the nation. Maxim is a national provider of loans and leases from $10,000 to $3 million collateralized by class 6 and 8 trucks, trailers, construction and agricultural heavy equipment, and real estate. The company fuels entrepreneurship by offering attractive financing rates and terms for underserved market segments, including startups and borrowers with challenged credit.
“It was a noteworthy quarter for our team,” noted Michael Kianmahd, Maxim’s CEO. “Despite the industry-wide slowdown in originations, we stayed on course to structure and fund deals during trying economic and market conditions. We were thrilled to welcome Lyndon Elam as Chief Operating Officer and continued to develop and roll out performance enhancing technology tools.”
Maxim experienced a good flow of applications for over-the-road (OTR) used truck and trailer financing during the period. While strong demand held used truck prices steady, many lenders retracted, leaving vendors and buyers scrambling for reliable financing. Funded deals during the period included a $45K 2020 Kenworth T680 with 528K miles for 26% down for a subprime startup owner operator with a 621 FICO; a $48K 2020 Kenworth T680 with 501K miles for 25% down for an experienced subprime owner operator with a 581 FICO; and a $23K 2020 Utility Dry Van for an existing customer with challenged credit for 25% down.
In addition to OTR trucks and trailers, Maxim is a leader in financing vocational trucks, such as tow trucks and dump trucks, and helping borrowers consolidate expensive MCA debt by lending against owned heavy equipment and real estate. As equipment leasing rates became more expensive during the period, Maxim received applications from borrowers with strong contracts seeking to purchase equipment.
Creatively structured deals during the third quarter include 60% purchase financing for a newer, rapidly growing construction company to buy a $40K 2025 Equipter RB4000 to improve efficiency on construction sites. Traditional lenders had turned down the business owner due to her 681 FICO, newly opened $60K auto loan, and $25K in student loan debt. Another startup entrepreneur with a business plan to haul construction material and a committed driver got the $106K 2020 Mack GRANITE 104BR Dump Truck she wanted for 34% down, despite her 541 FICO and discharged bankruptcy from 2018.
“One reason I was attracted to join Maxim is their creative, flexible approach to working with equipment vendors, finance brokers, and borrowers,” said Elam. “Our team takes the time to optimize financing structures, such as by asking about excess equipment or real estate collateral to improve advance rates or helping a borrower understand true affordability based on cash flow. This results in high approval to submission rates which is a key goal for all lenders.”
About Maxim Commercial Capital
Maxim Commercial Capital helps small and mid-sized business owners nationwide by providing loans and leases (“financing”) from $10,000 to $3 million secured by trucks, trailers, heavy equipment, and real estate. It funds equipment purchase financings and leases, working capital, and debt consolidations. Maxim’s more creative financing structures leverage equity in real estate and owned heavy equipment to facilitate growth and preserve customers’ cash. As a leading provider of transportation equipment financing, Maxim supports startup and experienced owner-operators and non-CDL small fleet owners by funding loans and leases for class 8 and class 6 trucks, trailers, and reefers. Learn more at www.maximcc.com or by calling 877-776-2946.
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Contact:
Michael Kianmahd, CEO
Maxim Commercial Capital
michael@maximcc.com
(213) 984-2727
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How Kaaj is Accelerating Small Business Lending
Utsav Shah first met Kristen Castell at deBanked CONNECT MIAMI this past February. At the time, Shah and his partner Shivi Sharma were freshly promoting a new AI technology to simplify small business lending. It’s called Kaaj, described as a core intelligence layer that bolts into a lender or broker’s CRM and handles all of the early-stage application intake and underwriting work. Shah had been familiar with the fintech accelerator Castell directs, the Center for Advancing Financial Equity (CAFE), which she was speaking about at the conference, but he had never actually met her in person until then.
“That’s really when we learned deeply about what CAFE’s mission is and how it works with a lot of startups, a very unique mission and very unique approach to work with startups and bring the ecosystem together,” said Sharma. “So we loved it and decided to apply this Fall.”
They applied into the exclusive accelerator program and were one of six companies to be selected, an honor considering hundreds of companies apply for entry on a bi-annual basis. As previously noted on deBanked, it’s an eight-week program, some of which takes place on location at the Fintech Innovation Hub on the University of Delaware campus. The rest is virtual but there are in-person field trips like a recent one to Washington DC, for example. deBanked has sponsored the last three accelerator cohorts which in the most recent cohort includes headline names like JPMorgan, PNC, Discover, Barclays, Capital One, M&T Bank, WSFS BANK, BNY Mellon, Prudential, Fulton Bank, County Bank, Best Egg, United Way, NeighborGood Partners, and the Delaware Bankers Association.
Kaaj, based in San Francisco, was already getting noticed beforehand. The company won the Fintech Meetup Startup Pitch Competition in March and secured a $50,000 prize, for example. Their technology is especially suited for equipment financing companies, MCA providers, small business lenders, SBA lenders, factors, and more.
“So imagine that you’re a lender, and you get hundreds of applications in a day, and you don’t really know where you want to focus your time on,” Shah said to deBanked. “‘What do these 100 deals mean for me, for my business? Are they even qualifying against my criteria, etc.’ So what Kaaj does, it provides very quick intelligence, within the first three minutes.”
Shah explained that as soon as someone submits a package with documents, they get analyzed from top to bottom, like KYC/KYB, the bank statements, and more. This helps lenders (and brokers) decide how to prioritize their time. Utsav’s background in technology has played a major role in building this out as he comes with a decade of AI experience and was building autonomous cars before building Kaaj.
“Time wins deals or time kills deals,” said Shah. “Either way that you want to look at it, if we can give that time back to them, if we can reduce that turnaround time on each individual deal and focus on those higher profitability deals for these companies or these lenders, then they can start really feeding the top line and the bottom line, because they’re not having to hire a bunch of folks.”
Sharma said that equipment finance is slightly more complex than MCA, for example, but that as a $1.4 trillion industry, it’s a market that’s ripe for innovation. Sharma used to work in commercial lending herself and has seen firsthand how manual processes and outdated technology slow things down and hurt not only the lenders but the borrowers in the process.
“I have worked on small business lending, commercial lending, payments fraud, onboarding fraud, a lot of that,” Sharma said. “I spotted a lot of challenges in that space and a clear lack of good technological solutions that really help these lenders scale efficiently.”
Shah, meanwhile, said that ultimately it’s about helping the end-user, the business borrower.
“We are very focused on solving for small businesses, because the final mission of the company is to get better access to capital for small businesses,” he said.
View PostPeople Are Using AI as a Replacement for Search
It used to always be Google when it came to search, but a recent study shared by OpenAI shows that people are using LLMs in a manner that is very similar to how they used Google.
21.3% of ChatGPT interactions, for example, are about seeking information, 28.3% are about practical guidance, and 7.5% are about technical help.
The data was based on 1.1 million sampled conversations between May 15, 2024 and June 26, 2025.
“While users can seek information and advice from traditional web search engines as well as from ChatGPT, the ability to produce writing, software code, spreadsheets, and other digital products distinguishes generative AI from existing technologies,” the report says. “ChatGPT is also more flexible than web search even for traditional applications like Seeking Information and Practical Guidance, because users receive customized responses (e.g., tailored workout plans, new product ideas, ideas for fantasy football team names) that represent newly generated content or novel modification of user-provided content and follow-up requests.”
ChatGPT’s crossover as a search engine is already going one step further. Last week the company announced that it was partnering with Stripe on in-chat checkout.
“The flow is simple: a ChatGPT user asks for product recommendations in the chat,” Stripe said of it. “When they are ready to buy, they are presented with a Stripe-powered checkout inline in the chat.”
And just as recently, ChatGPT is now also leaning into auto-complete queries, similar to what Google already does.
Typing “line of cred” into a query box, for example, shows “line of credit options for small businesses” as a potential query for the user to choose from.
