In this guide we will cover:

• Importance of finding the correct partner

• Which partners you can compare

Which partner is right for you?

To effectively compare funding partners, the key is to identify the features that are most important to you and to know what a good offer looks like. There’s no such thing as the “best funding partner for everybody”, but there is a "best funding partner for you". The higher your Funding Score, the more offers you’re likely to qualify for, and the more needed a comparison is. You might prefer to compare funding partners solely on the costs associated with your deal, or maybe by the benefits they offer. Whatever your reason, finding a partner that matches those preferences is crucial to your funding journey

Which partners can be compared?

Our funding partner comparison tool allows you to evaluate partners side by side. You can compare any of your saved partners against another saved partner, or against an unsaved partner. You might want to compare a saved partner with an unsaved partner that has offered you a deal to find out which one has a lower cost of capital. Another variable to compare can be which funding partner offers the benefits that are important to you in a deal. Our tool lets you compare two partners head to head with a clear and precise marker to identify the winner based on the parameters you set.

Welcome to FundStory!

This guide is designed to surface the fundamental knowledge and resources necessary to succeed with FundStory. The core concepts presented here are paramount to working with FundStory and will be assumed knowledge in all other training material.

In this guide we will cover:

• What is FundStory? - An introduction to FundStory and what it can do.

• New User Guides - How the FundStory software is structured.

• Platform Fundamentals - How the FundStory software is structured.

• Wrap-up - Tailored suggestions on where to go for continued learning and review of key terms in this guide.

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What is FundStory?

FundStory is a platform that streamlines the process of accessing and managing non-dilutive capital. With FundStory, finance teams can evaluate and improve their risk profile, automate funding applications, and analyze their cost of capital in real-time.

New User Guides: Jump right in

Follow our handy guides to get started on the basics as quickly as possible:

Learn the fundamentals of FundStory to get a deeper understanding of our main features:

Meet the Fundstory control center

The Fundstory control center might look simple and sleek, but its powerful engine makes it an invaluable tool for any organization. Reduce time spent pulling data sets from multiple spreadsheets and monitor all of your companys funding related data in one place. This visual interface helps you analyze all aspects of your funding goals from a single intuitive viewpoint.

Track every stage

Track and analyze your Funding Score to see the difference in risk associated with your business compared to the previous week. More options can mean better options, track how many new funding partners you matched with this past week and what that brings your total number of matched partners to. Track how much funding you have already secured and the amount of funds that went in or out of your account this past week.

Taking steps to meet your funding goal

Make informed, confident decisions with our recommended next steps, designed to be actionable and attainable while quickly and efficiently guiding you to your business objectives. Utilize the funding progress bar to track how close you are to reaching your full funding goal and to visualize the individual contributions from each lender. Understand which lenders are subordinates with marked indicators.

Saved partners overview

You have taken advantage of our saved partners feature, and have gone ahead and saved these specific funding partners for a reason. Whatever that reason is, you should have a place to get a birds-eye view of all of them and your progress relative to your objectives with each one. Monitor your current status through the eyes of any saved partner, and track your progress as you aim to accomplish the goals you have set forth in your funding journey.

In this guide we will cover:

• Why upgrade to Pro

• Pro pricing

Why upgrade to Pro?

The Fundstory Pro plan was built for those finance teams who want an unfair advantage in the fundraising game. The Pro plan promotes better decision-making by increasing the power and scope of our already industry-leading toolkit. Save time with unlimited saved partners, partner-specific goal insights, including proprietary AI forecasting, and app power-ups to maximize app capability. Act on our Pro recommendations to increase your funding odds, receive better terms on your deal, and lower your cost of capital. We understand that time is money, which is why all Pro plan users also receive priority support on all inquiries from our dedicated support team.

Pro pricing

The Fundstory Pro plan pricing model combines the best of the freemium and variable pricing models that are commonly found in SaaS products. We believe that every user should be able to access the best features to maximize their productivity in their fundraising journey. Because of this, our Pro plan is accessible to teams of any size. Receive full Pro functionality for as low as $49/ month depending on your company's revenue with our variable pricing scale. We have also implemented a free 14-day trial so that you can confidently determine the value of the Pro plan and see its effect on your business and your objectives.

In this guide we will cover:

• What is a Funding Score?

• How to generate a Funding Score?

What is a Funding Score?

A Funding Score is a proprietary Fundstory formula that accurately determines a company's chances of obtaining funding—including bank loans, lines of credit, revenue sharing agreements, and tax credits—to enable the progression of critical business activities. The Funding Score is sorted on a scale of 1-100 with the higher number representing better funding odds. Your Funding Score is calculated according to the qualification standards of each partner, and will automatically adjust based on the funding partner you have selected.

How to generate a Funding Score

To generate your personalized Funding Score, you will need to start by creating a Fundstory account. You will then be prompted to connect your payment processing software, accounting software, and business bank account, all of which are needed to produce an accurate Funding Score. Fundstory’s proprietary algorithm will then analyze the data from these sources in real-time and produce a Funding Score that accurately depicts the health of your business. Once your Funding Score is generated, we help you understand your business by sharing the top factors that impact your score. With these insights, you can focus your efforts where it counts and take immediate steps to improve your Funding Score.

In this guide we will cover:

• What is a funding partner? - An introduction to the funding partner list and what it can do.

• The funding partner list & Recommendations - Tailored suggestions on what partners to save.

What is a funding partner?

A funding partner is a partner that assists you in your funding journey by providing you with capital so that you can grow and accomplish your mission. As per the Fundstory philosophy, raising capital is more than just a transaction, there is more to the story, and your partner should be just that, a partner. Every funding partner on the Fundstory platform has been audited and verified and meets the Fundstory threshold of what a partner is. Funding types vary by funding partner, as do the associated benefits that each partner offers.

The funding partner list

Our funding partner list allows you to save multiple funding partners and view every step of your journey through the lens of any one of them throughout your experience on the FundStory platform. As funding partners have different qualification standards, it's important to see where you stand with each one. Learn everything you need to know about a partner, by simply clicking their bio to understand: which industries they service, average deal size, and much more. The more partners you save, the better chance you have of finding the right one for you and your company.

Your company

Many software solutions offer just that, a solution. While the solution is the most important part of the offering, we believe that the experience should be tailored to you. Your company profile is the place for you to make Fundstory yours. Add a banner and profile picture to make your profile reflect who you are. By giving you full access to edit your choices like preferences, funding amount, or funding type, stay up to date on all your objectives in the event that things changed over time. Define what's important to you by toggling specific preferences that you expect from a lender. Check your activity stream at any time to see partners that you've saved, matched with, or received an offer from. Switch over to the "Team" tab to quickly invite teammates as well as edit the permissions and access that each team member has.

Preparing for a fundraise

Lets start with what lenders DON’T care about: Pitch decks and 15 year projections.

Since these lenders are not taking equity, their ROI is limited to the terms of the agreement.

Therefore, a lenders main focus is on trying to minimize risk of their investment in order to increase the odds of a beneficial outcome.

Because of this, lenders value cold, hard, numbers.

Numbers will tell them what they need to know in order to calculate risk and whether to proceed with an investment or not.

How do lenders evaluate risk?

Most modern lenders will make you connect financial accounts to determine the risk factor associated with your business.

This is usually in the form of sales data (from a source like Stripe), accounting data (from a source like QuickBooks), and your business bank account (through a Plaid connection).

This is generally enough information for a lender to understand what makes your business tick, how capital allocation can help, and the risk factor associated with you business.

Lenders can also ask for certain KPIs to understand what the driving force behind your business are.

This is a less standard practice as the aforementioned connections will usually be enough for a lender to calculate the risk factor.

Matching with the right partner

The first thing to consider when matching with a partner is what business type the funding partner has expertise in.

This is important as this could foreshadow their ability to guide you through any issues in an industry that they understand.

While many lenders will lend to multiple business types, they generally have a primary and secondary focus.

The second thing is to consider are the benefits they offer.

From no credit checks, to no prepayment penalties, different lenders offer different perks in relation to the funding agreement.

This is very important to many founders as there are certain issues they feel strongly about.

The third, (and maybe most important), factor to consider when choosing a funding partner, is trust and communication.

A partner that you can trust will give you the peace of mind to focus on growing your business and not constantly keeping an eye on your partner.

While most funding partners are professional, founders want a partner that you can easily communicate with.

This is especially important if the business is facing any challenges that a funding partner is able to guide you through.

Managing multiple funding partners

What is the advantage of having multiple partners?

This is a really great question and there are two common cases where multiple partners are utiized.

The first case is when one partner can't provide the full amount of capital you are looking for. In this case, splitting your funding target between two or more capital partners is a viable option.

The second case where a team desires multiple capital partners is if you want to access multiple funding types.

In this case, one partner might extend a line of credit and another might offer a revenue share agreement.

Different funding types might be accessed to accomplish different objectives.

Of the group of partners that are lending to you, there will be one “senior lender”.

The senior lender is the lender in the group that has the most rights.

This lender will sometimes ask that the other lenders sign a subordination agreement.

A subordination agreement establishes an order of loan repayment should there not be enough money to repay all lenders involved.

Subordination agreements are pretty common and your capital partners should be familiar with them and the content they contain as they are all similarly structured.

The Balance dashboard gives you insights into managing your raised funds like no legacy bank can. Managing funds and repayments in the past has lacked the necessary context for teams to outperform their cost of capital due to most banking solutions not offering anything more than fund storage. Our Balance solution is custom-tailored to your deal so that you only receive relevant and important suggestions and data-based insights. Use the accompanying Fundstory card to track spending and remain aware of your remaining funds and repayment schedule.

The Risk dashboard is where you can track all aspects of the risk factor associated with your business. In the past, you either qualified for funding from a funding partner or you didn't, no explanation as to why, or the steps to take to de-risk your business and become fundable. The Risk dashboard has a singular purpose: to give you the insights and the tools that you need to increase your Funding Score and become fundable according to the qualification standards of each of your saved partners.

Generating a Funding Score

Generate your custom Funding Score to get a real-time view of where your company stands relative to the credit box of any lender. Your Funding Score tells a lender the story of your reliability and predicts the chance of on-time payments. Your Funding Score is measured on a scale from 0 to 100. The highest represents excellent credit, while the lowest represents a higher risk factor.

De-risk your business

While each lender is different, our proprietary scoring system can help you determine whether you’ll qualify for a funding product, and assist you in de-risking it if you do not. Watch your Funding Score improve in real-time as you de-risk your business by harnessing the power of our Qualitative and Quantitive-based tools. Focus your efforts where it counts and take the necessary steps to improve your Funding Score and de-risk your business.

Track your deal history

Finance teams deserve tools and technology that will help them drive strategic decision-making, even when that means looking into the past. View and analyze all your previous deals in a timeline-like view so you can better understand how your current options relate to your past funding experiences. Data can be manually imported or synced directly from your banking records.

In this guide we will cover:

• Inviting a teammate to Fundstory

• Giving your teammates dashboard access

Inviting a teammate to Fundstory

Proactively analyzing numbers with your teammates is a must-have for any modern-day finance team. Inviting your teammates to Fundstory allows you to unleash the full power of collaborative financial planning software. We have streamlined the process of adding teammates with our intuitive interface. Team members can be invited by selecting "Company Profile" on the left side navbar and then selecting “Manage team”. From there, just add the email of the team member you want to invite and assign them a role to determine their level of access.

Giving your teammates dashboard access

As with any financial collaboration tool, once your teammates are invited, it's time to assign them to the right task in order to maximize their contribution to the project. Assign teammates to specific tasks, define permissions & exchange ideas at the pace your business needs to succeed. To do this, navigate to the “Company Profile” button on the navbar. From there, select “Team” to view all your invited team members and the permissions for each one. Click on the team member that you want to assign a task to, and edit their permissions to reflect the needs of your organization.

In this guide we will cover:

• Perks of improving your Funding Score

• Tools to improve your Funding Score

Perks of improving your Funding Score

Before we discuss how to improve your Funding Score, we need to understand why it's so important. Aside from knowing exactly where your business's financial health stands, the amount of credit that suppliers will allocate to you, or your ability to secure loans in general, your Funding Score can determine the odds of success of many of your financing efforts. Your Funding Score is the key factor lenders use to determine how likely you are to pay back what you owe. Our wide selection of lending partners is adjusted based on the details of your business Funding Score. Your approval odds, terms, and rates will all be more favorable as your Funding Score continues to improve.

Tools to improve your Funding Score

No matter where you are in your business’s credit journey, we want to help you go further. Improving your Funding Score can sound like a formidable and almost insurmountable task, and in fact, it used to be. To solve this, we built tools to guide you through every step of it. We have broken these tools into 2 sections: Qualitative and Quantitive. Qualitative tasks that can increase your Funding Score are found and managed in the Planning app. The Quantitive insights can be found in the Targeting app and have historically been the main drivers behind an increased Funding Score. Take the guesswork out of what it takes to improve your Funding Score and get the offers and terms that you want.

Dashboard value

Every stage of the funding journey is important and making sure you're on top of it is critical. That's why we created dedicated dashboards for each stage of the funding journey, distraction-free, while still giving you the ability to quickly toggle to any stage you want to view. Each dashboard is a critical and strategic accessory in your fundraising journey.

The Match dashboard is the place for you to find the correct funding partner for your business using our powerful filtering tools. Finding a partner might be easy, but finding the right partner has traditionally been more difficult, with multiple tabs and screens required to get a semblance of a side-by-side comparison. The Match dashboard changes that, by allowing you to analyze all funding partners on one screen, so you can confidently move forward with your ideal partner.

Compare what matters to you

As the tip of the spear in your organization's fundraising effort, the pressure is on you, the finance team to make sure your organization is getting the best deal possible. Our simple financial planning software makes it easy to confirm that you are getting the correct deal for your company. Compare any of your saved partners head to head with any of your new matches. Set the comparison parameters to factors like cost or benefits and find your ideal capital partner.

FundStory Targeting app

The Fundstory Targeting app provides you with the quantitative data you need to better understand, and de-risk your business. Understanding what is driving your Funding Score and how to increase it is part of the unfair advantage the Fundstory aims to give to each and every user. Automate the data gathering with your financial integrations to help shape the best way forward. Manage your financial and operational data quickly and efficiently by tracking high volumes of operational metrics. Do away with time-draining manual tasks and focus on the path to growth and profitability.

FundStory Planning app

The Fundstory Planning app provides finance teams with a clear path forward in their fundraising journey. Not knowing what to do to increase your Funding Score has been a problem in the past and it has contributed to the anxiety involved in the fundraising process. Our intuitive kanban-style app makes it easy to track and perform actionable qualitative tasks that actively move the needle on your Funding Score. Take the guesswork out of what it takes to improve your business funding odds and start planning now.

Add powerful apps to your workflow

Install any of the apps in our marketplace to seamlessly integrate powerful tools that provide you with the strategic insights to conquer your fundraising goals. All of our internal apps are developed with a single goal in mind: supplementing the Fundstory process by increasing the odds of a successful fundraise for all of our users. All 3rd party apps are thoroughly vetted and stress-tested to confirm that the Fundstory experience will only be enhanced by their addition.