Quick background on Stanza: we offer marketing software to sports teams, venues and organizations with events, making it easy for fans to add events to their calendars.
As the founder of an events marketing company, being in the “eye of the hurricane” is quite possibly an understatement right now. Landing the PPP loan was a much needed lifeline for small businesses like us.
It has allowed us to avoid layoffs, which means we can support our customer base when sports, concerts & entertainment will undoubtedly return.
As Part II of the PPP loan kicks off later this week, here are our learnings from how we navigated this (frankly awful) process.
Timeline: We applied Tuesday April 7th. Got in touch with someone by April 8th and our loan was approved by the SBA by April 10th. Funding happened on April 22nd.
1. Get in early… at the right bank
We bank with Wells Fargo — yes, the robber bank. We’ve had many wonderful relationship managers at Wells Fargo, but it’s fairly obvious businesses like ours are not a priority. I have to give credit to our relationship manager for pointing that out early enough to give us options.
If you are a small business banking with any of the big banks, the above likely holds true.
The problem is that most banks aren’t accepting new customers or are telling you that you can only apply at one bank at a time (also not true).
How did we find a local bank? Our sales reps went down this list of SBA Lenders and called local / merchant banks. We called all banks in the state of California and focused on SoCal vs NorCal because of population density, hence more banks.
We called about ~60 banks and applied with Sunwest in Irvine.
What qualifying questions to ask a bank?
- Are you accepting new customers? (duh)
- Is your application process online or in-person?
- Are you a SBA Preferred Lender? (Preferred Lenders have a streamlined process with the SBA)
- How many applications have you processed in the past few weeks?
2. Talk to a person(!)
Every bank has said that their process is 100% online. However, ultimately there is a person who is verifying that your application is in order. At Sunwest, these were the people who are working nights & weekends to make sure applications were processed in time.
How did we find someone to talk to? You can start with the main line and ask for a contact at the SBA department. As I’ve learned, if a bank is a SBA Preferred Lender — they have a department that focuses on processing these loans. I left a few voicemails and also got an email from the main line to contact.
Be nice! In hindsight, what helped to get a hold of the right person was appreciating the work that they were doing. In our case, that was a given considering that some of these folks were working through Easter Weekend.
3. Make sure your bank goes through SBA approval before internal approval
Banks have their own underwriting process separate from the SBA. In some cases, I heard that banks wanted to go through their own underwriting process before sending the application off to the SBA.
That is a waste of time and sets you back as the PPP Loans are first come, first serve. The loan is also 100% backed by the SBA so the underwriting risk for your bank is non-existent. While you can make this point to a bank until you are blue in the face, my recommendation would be to cut your losses and find a bank that gets your application in the queue as fast as possible.
Good luck and good tidings!
I’ll post a follow up post on how we’re navigating the funding & forgiveness portion of the loan.
