Slope

There’s a paradox in lending. Consumer cash flow underwriting has exploded in recent years. Cashflow scores from Plaid, Nova, Prism, and Experian now rival FICO itself. Yet in the SMB world, nothing exists. When I began working on this problem 4 years ago, that inequality puzzled me. SMBs are a $12T market. Financing is existential for SMBs in a way that it isn’t for consumers. And commercial lending – one of the slowest, oldest, and most labor-intensive forms of lending today – is so obviously unfit for most SMBs that it stands so much to gain. It turns out the answer is simple. Nothing exists for SMBs, because SMB cash flows are simply harder to understand: 1/ Complexity. SMB cash flows are infinitely more complex than consumers’. Both across each key activity (income, financing, capital) and across time (seasonality, market-sensitivity). 2/ Diversity. Imagine the day-to-day operations of a restaurant, a roofing company, and an e-commerce seller. They are completely different businesses, and their P&Ls reflect that. A simple, global taxonomy that works for consumers (rent, food, entertainment) fails for SMBs. 3/ Context-dependence. Business cash flows are overwhelmingly ambiguous. Consider that a significant portion of a business’s revenue can take the form of ACH transfers, wires, and payments from both individuals and other businesses that look like: ZELLE CREDIT FROM: JOHN SMITH MEMO: PAYMENT INV#22918 In other words, SMBs and consumers are fundamentally different: one is a long-tail problem, one is a short-tail problem. The thing that makes long-tail problems hard is that an 80/20 solution does not exist – one must grind out the edge cases one by one, transaction by transaction, counterparty by counterparty. This blog explores that problem, and how we've tried to solve it.

Slope’s data was featured in the latest issue of Payments Unbound, by WIRED and J.P. Morgan! The hard part of supply chains isn’t just moving goods, it’s the cash timing. Costs hit first; revenue lands later. That gap is why BNPL can matter more for businesses than consumers. The chart below shows four anonymized Slope customers - each with a different “right moment” to finance, even within the same supply chain. This really illustrates how complex B2B payments are and how tariffs effects cascade through the industry.

Behind the headline is almost a year’s worth of work. Here’s a behind the scenes of our partnership — trips to Hangzhou and Shenzhen, daily lunch and dinners where we tried dishes from every province, boba runs that powered our brainstorm sessions :) Very grateful to the Alibaba team for their hospitality and kindness that transported borders. 

With all the news about our Alibaba.com launch, I want to take a moment to recognize Keyi (Sophie) Wang, whose work was absolutely essential to making it a success. Sophie joined Slope in customer success, but CS at Slope is far more than answering questions or handling typical responsibilities. It’s deeply tied into product decisions and the project management that makes partner launches possible. She took the lead in managing our Alibaba launch and she excelled. She ramped up quickly to pick up many entirely new skills she hadn’t done before, like data science and engineering, to keep the project moving. I’ve been impressed with the level of care she brings into everything she does. There are many downstream positive effects of her level of care. She’s consistently on top of every detail, the steady force keeping the team organized, and she’s been generous with her time to make sure nothing is left undone. Sophie, thank you for all your hustle, the positive energy and dedication to making this launch a success! You exemplify Slope in every way.

We’re hiring engineers at Slope as we partner with some of the largest companies on the planet (big names coming soon!). Biased or not, this is honestly one of the most productive engineering teams I’ve ever seen given how much we’ve shipped with a lean crew. We deeply care about our customers and the products we build. Every engineer here spends real time talking directly with customers and partners, often daily, and functions as a forward deployed engineer. It’s an AI-first team that values strong product sense and building things from scratch. If this sounds like you, or someone awesome you know, send me a message with something impressive you’ve built!