General
Our mission is twofold: to drive down the cost of funding for small businesses and to create healthier, less risky outcomes for both small businesses and lenders. We believe that capital should be accessible and fair–benefiting both sides of the borrowing relationship.
BrokerFreeCapital.ai is for small business owners who may be considering working with a broker because they feel uncertain about the funding market or aren’t sure where to start. If you:
• Feel overwhelmed by the number of funding options available and think a broker might get you the best deal by “shopping around.”
• Worry that you don’t have the expertise or insider knowledge to negotiate directly with lenders.
• Want to avoid brokers who hide their fees inside your loan terms, adding hidden costs that can hurt your business in the long run.
• Are looking for a straightforward, transparent approach to finding funding without the agenda of a commission-driven middleman.
• Value honest advice that is focused on your business’s long-term health, even if that advice means cutting costs rather than taking on more debt.
Then BrokerFreeCapital.ai is the platform for you. We’ll guide you through the process, helping you understand the market, and provide recommendations tailored to your business—without the high broker fees or hidden commissions.
Lenders and finance companies have varying qualification criteria based on factors like deal type, risk appetite, and industry. However, to receive lender recommendations through BrokerFreeCapital.ai, your business should generally meet these minimum qualifications:
• In operation for at least 6 months.
• Generating at least $100,000 in annualized revenue (or $50,000 for e-commerce businesses).
BrokerFreeCapital.ai is specifically designed to support small businesses registered in the United States. While we can offer advice to startups generating less than these revenue levels, we may not be able to recommend specific lenders, as most funding options require a more established business.
In most cases, enlisting a loan broker is not the right move for a small business looking for working capital. A detailed explanation of the downsides of working with a loan broker could fill a small library. Suffice to say that we believe BrokerFreeCapital.ai can deliver lower cost of capital lender recommendations without the high costs associated with middlemen. For a more detailed explanation please check out these relevant blog posts:
– Why We’re Here: Exposing the Truth About Loan Brokers
– The Hidden Costs of Working with Loan Brokers
– Brokers Are Ripping You Off, But You’re Letting Them
For now, we have decided to keep the owner/operators behind BFC anonymous.
We anticipate loan brokers finding our problem to be problematic for their businesses (if they don’t, we aren’t successfully fulfilling our mission) and anonymizing ourselves will help keep your advice and recommendations as unbiased as possible.
If we decide to unveil ourselves in the future, we will explain our reasoning at that time.
We do want to stress that the owner/operators of BFC are long-time industry professionals eager to expose the tricks and tactics (dirty and otherwise) that commercial loan brokers use to drive up the cost of your funding. We know these tricks and tactics because we have used them ourselves to close thousands of deals using them while working at lenders and broker shops over the last 15+ years.
Diogenes is our proprietary AI chatbot operating on the latest large language models offered by OpenAI. As of October 2024 that model is GPT-4o. We are constantly evaluating additional models to see if they can improve our recommendations and the overall functionality of Diogenes. Moreover, we have specifically trained Diogenes on a variety of small business financing related topics, many known only to industry veterans, to make its recommendations as insightful as possible.
By combining the latest advances in AI with good old-fashioned insider industry knowledge, Diogenes will match you with a curated selection of lenders for your business–eliminating the middleman and savings you thousands or more in your funding costs.
Funding Process
Reading our blog will give you a ton of information and hopefully help you realize that you do probably shouldn’t hire a loan broker to help get working capital for your business. From there, you can launch Diogenes to get more personalized funding advice for your SMB.
Launch Diogenes, our AI-powered chatbot specifically designed and trained to assist small business owners seeking working capital. By answering a few basic questions about your business, Diogenes will be able to recommend a curated selection of lenders and finance companies that you can apply with directly, bypassing the need for a broker and the high costs associated with them.
Definitely not. We strenuously believe that debt financing is often not the right move for your business. Most brokers only generate revenue via commissions from closed loans/fundings and will always recommend getting funding even if it’s the wrong move.
Unfortunately, the structure of the small business lending market in the last 15-20 years has only entrenched this bad advice. BFC seeks to do its small part to tap the brakes and hopefully reverse this destructive trend.
Correct, we believe that applying directly to a handful of curated lenders (assuming financing is even recommended in the first place) will lead to the best possible outcome for you: lower rates, better service, and funding more aligned to the specific needs of your business because you will not need to work through the competing agenda of a broker.
At BrokerFreeCapital.ai, the financial products we recommend can broadly be categorized as either working capital or growth capital solutions. These products are designed to cover a wide range of business needs, including:
• Covering cash flow gaps
• Funding purchase orders
• Purchasing inventory
• Supporting hiring and marketing efforts
• Financing equipment
• Making tenant improvements
• Launching new products
• Opening additional locations
To meet these needs, we generally recommend products such as term loans, lines of credit, invoice factoring, asset-based lending, equipment financing, revenue-based financing, and embedded finance solutions. The funding companies we work with will typically include a mix of banks, credit unions, and online lenders.
Our expertise lies in the realm of working capital and growth capital, and while we currently do not focus on areas like purchasing commercial real estate, acquiring other businesses, or partner buyouts, we hope to expand our coverage into these areas in the future as we grow.
Donation
At BrokerFreeCapital.ai, we operate on a unique business model. We don’t take commissions from lenders, and we don’t allow any form of paid advertising or sponsored placements. Instead, we rely on donations from users who find value in our service. You can choose to donate any amount, or nothing at all, based on the value you receive.
We believe in providing transparent, unbiased advice that helps small business owners find the best funding options without hidden costs or broker fees.
The amount you choose to donate is entirely up to you, and any contribution is greatly appreciated. As a general guideline, we recommend donating 1% of the total funding amount you ultimately secure through our platform. This is a benchmark for the value we provide and is substantially lower—typically 5 to 15 times less—than what you’d pay a broker.
Of course, donations are always optional, whether or not you secure funding. Your support helps us continue offering unbiased, transparent advice to business owners.
We recognize that taking on debt is a serious consideration and is often NOT the right move for a business. In those cases, we recommend donating an amount of money that you feel our advice is worth or nothing at all (if we’re not recommending a lender, it is our judgment that saving any additional working capital you have is probably the first order of business).
In those cases, leaving a positive review (only if we have earned it) is always helpful!
Find the right lender for your business. No brokers. No middlemen. No fees.
Diogenes is the first AI Chatbot designed and trained to address the needs of small business seeking working capital.