The center of a tech region
Palo Alto is named for El Palo Alto and covers about 26 square miles, with 68,572 residents in 2020. Wikipedia says it was incorporated in 1894 by industrialist Leland Stanford and his wife Jane, who founded Stanford University in memory of their only child. It is one of the principal cities of Silicon Valley, home to the headquarters of tech companies including HP, Space Systems/Loral, VMware and PARC. It has also been the headquarters or founding location of several others, including Apple, Google, Meta, Logitech, Tesla, Intuit and IDEO. Ford and Lockheed Martin maintain major research and technology facilities there.
The city is described as a central economic focal point of Silicon Valley, with more than 7,000 businesses employing more than 98,000 people.
Not every business is a startup
Those numbers hide a very different small-business reality. A business with fewer than twenty employees in Palo Alto may be a restaurant, a bookstore, a dry cleaner, a design studio, a consulting firm, a medical or dental practice, a tutoring center or an independent repair shop. They face the following:
- Rent and wages are high. Even a small team carries a significant payroll, and there is little slack.
- Customers are employees of larger firms. Lunch, dry cleaning and personal services depend on office attendance, which can change quickly.
- Contract clients pay slowly. A consultant or design studio might wait 45 to 60 days for a large client to pay.
- Talent is mobile. Hiring and retention cost money.
The city once had a railroad village feel, with bungalows and prim storefronts lining the streets in the mid-1950s. Today's businesses sit between that history and a dense economy shaped by Stanford's applied programs.
Illustration: a design studio
For illustration only, not our terms: a six-person design studio wins a project for a software company worth $120,000, billed in thirds. Payroll is $38,000 a month. The first milestone is paid on net-45. The studio has been working for six weeks before any money arrives, and a delay in approvals can stretch that. This is a normal timing gap for professional-services firms, and funding it deliberately is more stable than stretching vendors.
How funding fits
Our approach is built around bank statements rather than tax returns. About three months of business bank statements show your deposits, your payroll and the rhythm of your clients' payments. Sole proprietors, including independent consultants and one-person studios, can apply.
For regional context, see the Santa Clara County page and the Bay Area overview. Owners in Mountain View, Sunnyvale, Cupertino and San Jose apply the same way.
Terms in brief
We provide $25,000 to $5,000,000, with funding possible in as little as 24 hours. We consider FICO 500+, do not require tax returns, and use a five-minute application with a soft credit pull. Apply here.