Runway is just the gap between two dates
Founders talk about runway in months of burn. For an IT services shop or a small software company, a more useful version is simpler: how many days sit between the day you pay your people and the day your client pays you?
A consulting firm that bills monthly and gets paid on net-45 terms is financing its clients for about two and a half months of work, because the month of work, the invoice cycle and the payment term all stack. Salaries, contractor invoices, cloud bills and software licences are due on their own calendars. The business can be profitable on paper and still short on the 15th.
Two kinds of tech business, two kinds of gap
Services and contract work
Staffing out developers, managing IT for small businesses or doing implementation projects usually means predictable monthly revenue and predictable payroll. The risk is concentration: one client paying late can be a quarter of your month. A longer payment term from a larger client is a cash event even when nothing is wrong.
Product and subscription startups
Here revenue starts small and costs start large. Engineering salaries and hosting come first; customers come in gradually. The question is whether the next few months of income can carry the burn until a milestone, such as a pilot converting to a paid contract.
Funding is a poor fit when the business has no revenue and no plan to earn it. It is a closer fit when revenue exists, is documented in bank statements, and the issue is timing.
What San Diego brings to the picture
San Diego is the second-most populous city in California, with 1,386,932 residents in the 2020 census, and sits in a county of 3,298,634 people. Public sources describe it as a recent emergence as a wireless, electronics, healthcare and biotechnology development center, in an economy whose largest sectors include military and defense-related work, tourism, international trade, research and manufacturing.
For a small tech business, that mix means customers who are often larger organisations: research groups, healthcare operators, manufacturers and government-adjacent firms. Larger customers tend to have formal accounts-payable processes, which means approval steps, vendor onboarding and standard payment terms that you do not control. It is common to deliver the work well and still wait.
A simple cash calendar for a ten-person shop
The numbers below are round and for illustration only; they are not our terms or a typical result.
| Item | When it leaves or arrives |
|---|---|
| Payroll for ten people | Twice a month, fixed dates |
| Contractor invoices | Often net-15 or net-30, after the month of work |
| Cloud, tooling and licences | Monthly or annual, often on a card |
| Client payment | Net-30 to net-60 after invoice, sometimes later |
Lay those on a calendar and you will usually find one or two weeks a quarter where cash is lowest. Those are the weeks funding is for: not the whole year, just the stretch where everything is owed and nothing has landed.
When funding makes sense, and when to wait
Funding tends to make sense when you have signed work but the client's payment cycle is longer than your payroll cycle, or when you need to hire ahead of a confirmed contract. It makes less sense to use it to cover a loss that has no end date.
Working capital of $25,000 to $5,000,000 is available, funded in as little as 24 hours. FICO scores of 500 and up are considered, and the file rests on about three months of bank statements, with no tax returns. The application takes about five minutes and uses a soft credit pull. Sole proprietors, including independent consultants, can apply. See revenue-based financing, startup business loans and working capital for how repayment is structured, or the county overview.