December 19, 2023

Best of 2023

Happy Tuesday, friends. As we count down to the new year, I wanted to share a few of the newsletters and podcast episodes that got the most feedback from 2023.

Before we share the editions and episodes that prompted the most feedback, though, I want to thank all of you for sharing your thoughts and your time with me in 2023. I appreciate your feedback and ideas, and I’m grateful to you for reading and listening as we all navigate an ever-changing and challenging alternative capital market. Here’s my request of you: if you have topics or people you would like me to cover or interview, send them along. I love the ideas I get from this community, and I’m always open to more!

Now, back to the best of 2023.

In the Dope Sick newsletter series, we talked about how poorly-structured alternative capital and debt products harm entrepreneurs:

Dope Sick: How Certain Lenders Are Harming Entrepreneurs

Curing Dope Sickness – The Regulators Are Coming

In Lessons From The Trenches: Six Years Of RBF & Alternative Capital, I shared thoughts from six years in the alternative capital market.

We held a successful Capital Innovation Summit in June, and shared key takeaways in Special Edition: Recapping the Capital Innovation Summit.

I shared some controversial thoughts about VC and other standard funding options in How Spray & Pray Kills Companies.

Jonathan Bragdon at Capacity Capital inspired me to write There Are No Evil Financial Tools - Only Evil Financial Partners.

In the podcast series, we had great feedback on these conversations:

Tyler Tringas of Calm Fund shared the ups and downs of being an innovator in the capital markets on Episode #15 Staying Calm: Building Something Unique in a Market That Rewards Same-ness.

We learned how to think about credit and how to make it sexy from Novel’s Chief Credit Officer Mike Luebbers on Episode #13 Making Credit Sexy.

We heard from alternative capital OG BJ Lackland of Equal Capital and IBI Spikes Fund about the direction of our market on Episode #12 Going From Zero-to-One to 650 Deals Funded.

We learned about how alternative capital pioneers are changing SMB and Main Street brick and mortar funding from Ben Lozano of SMBX on Episode #1 Funding Main Street & Bagels, Chris Atkins of C2FO on Episode #16 Building An Alternative Capital Juggernaut to $300B in Entrepreneurs Funded, and Nick Mathews of Mainvest on Episode #17 When RBF Rears Its Beautiful Head.

I hope you all enjoyed 2023 as much as I did, and I look forward to sharing more in 2024. Happy Holidays!