Response on Lighter Capital’s “explosive” promotion has been somewhere between “that’s totally awesome” and “that’s totally crazy” – which is exactly what I had wanted.

I want to give some insight to how we came onto this idea, and why people should expect more of the same from lighter capital soon.

Compared to more traditional funding sources like banks and venture capitalists, Lighter Capital's funding process is faster, our capital is less expensive, and we’re (hopefully) a lot more fun to interact and work with. So what's the best way to market that?

We’re fast, but not out-of-control fast

We were planning our new site and coming up with ideas for how we could showcase ourselves, and we thought we’d emphasize how “fast” we are. We thought – let’s fund a company in a week and have a daily-deal-like counter to add some time pressure to us and the applicant. Turns out, there are a lot of people who claim this. A search for “fast money” gets all these ads:

We may never be as fast as some of these guys, nor do we want to be like these guys -- Lighter Capital is a LOT more legitimate than these options – we won’t break people’s knee-caps if they don’t pay. Maybe we’ll take an extra week to make a loan, but the terms should be a lot better for the borrower.

We’re definitely crazier

If the speed story wasn’t going to work, we know we’re a bit willing to admit that we are crazier than main-stream funding sources. “Let’s fund something nobody else would fund.” Dirty companies, messy companies, loud companies, stuff like that. we decided August would be the month to fund an EXPLOSIVE company – it’s good, has some mixed connotations so it raises eyebrows. We ultimately toned it down to focus on a company with explosive growth, but we’re still holding out hope that a company that sells or uses explosives may still apply. Call me crazy.