My guest today is Denada Ramnishta, the Chief Revenue Officer at Efficient Capital Labs. I've known Denada for over a decade, having first met her during her time at American Express where she was part of the early team building out merchant financing. She's been a consistent champion for democratizing capital access for small and medium-sized businesses, and now she's doing that at ECL, which provides non-dilutive funding and cross-border payment infrastructure for AI and SaaS companies.

In this episode, we dig into how ECL approaches revenue-based financing differently from others in the space, their AI-driven underwriting system called Aura, the fascinating origin story behind their cross-border payments product ECL Flow, why VCs are actually their top referral source, and how they're adapting their underwriting as SaaS pricing models shift from recurring revenue to usage-based models. We also discuss the so-called SaaS apocalypse and what Denada is actually seeing on the ground from the founders she works with every day.

In this podcast you will learn:

Her journey from American Express to Efficient Capital Labs.
What her time at Amex taught her about building responsible lending products.
What ECL does exactly.
What has been learned from the high profile stumbles in revenue based financing.
How debt funding has been misunderstood by founders.
Why VCs are the number one deal source for ECL.
Their underwriting system called Aura and why it is unique.
How Aura has allowed them to evolve their underwriting process.
Why they decided to expand to underwriting companies that operate cross border.
Why they created ECL Flow and expand into cross border money movement.
Where they will be expanding this new infrastructure.
Denada’s thoughts on the SaaS apocalypse.
As pricing models change for SaaS, how they are adapting their underwriting models.
How they are able to grow fast with very low charge off rates.
What is next for ECL.

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