Lighter Capital, the leading fintech lender to tech startups, announced today that it has appointed Thor Culverhouse as its CEO, effective as of September 23, 2019. In this role, he will lead the company through its next stage of growth with a focus on international expansion and broadening the company’s portfolio of financial solutions. Culverhouse succeeds BJ Lackland, who will shift into an advisory role. The appointment of Culverhouse, a three-time tech startup CEO, underscores Lighter Capital’s continued commitment to support tech startups with non-dilutive financing up to $3 million that scales with a company’s growth. To date, Lighter Capital has provided over $165 million in more than 600 rounds of financing to over 350 startups.
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Thor Culverhouse, new CEO of Lighter Capital (Photo: Business Wire)
“I’m proud of what Lighter Capital has accomplished,” said Lackland. “In seven years, we’ve financed hundreds of startups, popularized Revenue-Based Financing, and built Lighter Capital from zero revenue to four consecutive years on the Inc. 5000 list of the fastest growing companies. Thor’s outstanding experience scaling companies through the next stage of growth makes him the ideal leader to build on this success.”
Culverhouse joins Lighter Capital as the company has begun to expand its offerings. Under Lackland’s leadership, Lighter Capital has grown significantly through pioneering Revenue-Based Financing (RBF), which is now the most popular alternative startup financing model. Building off its success with RBF, the company recently began offering lines of credit and term loans, bringing entrepreneurs more options to help them grow their startups.
Earlier this year, Lighter Capital also announced a key strategic partnership with Silicon Valley Bank to better serve early-stage tech companies seeking online access to debt capital and banking services. The joint offering (https://svb.lightercapital.com/) provides entrepreneurs with the financial tools and support they need prior to raising a traditional round of venture funding.
“I am impressed by Lighter Capital’s success building a whole new category of startup financing and am excited to join at this stage of growth,” said Culverhouse. “As a serial entrepreneur myself, Lighter Capital’s mission to empower entrepreneurs resonates with me and I’m looking forward to the opportunity to exponentially expand the business in this largely untapped and growing market.”
Culverhouse, a tech industry veteran, was most recently the CEO of Skytap. Over the last six years, he led Skytap’s business transformation and built key strategic partnerships, resulting in significant top-line growth of 7x. Previous to Skytap, Culverhouse was the CEO and Founder of willbeHired (acquired by TriNet), CEO at Stratavia (acquired by HP), and held senior management roles at HP, IBM, Interwoven, and SeeBeyond. He graduated from Washington State University and was a finalist for EY’s Entrepreneur of the Year award in 2016.
Lighter Capital’s leading fintech platform pulls in 6,500 data points to quickly analyze startups and reduce entrepreneurs’ time to raise funds by over 90%. The company uses proprietary algorithms to determine a credit rating and data science to predict a startup’s revenue growth, with 97% accuracy, on average. By using objective, data-driven practices, Lighter Capital provides up to $3 million in funding to a broad array of tech startups, promoting diversity of ideas, perspectives and leaders — ensuring that strong, creative thinkers have access to the resources they need, when they need them.
About Lighter Capital
Lighter Capital is a fintech company revolutionizing startup finance by offering a new funding path for early-stage tech companies. We understand that an entrepreneur’s two greatest constraints are time and money, and we’ve developed technology to fund companies quickly and easily. We provide up to $3 million of non-dilutive growth capital in a fraction of the time it takes to raise from traditional sources. Based in Seattle, we’ve provided over 600 financings to 350 companies across the US. More at www.lightercapital.com.
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