Meridian Capital Solutions was founded in 2019 on a contrarian observation: the small businesses that build the most durable value in the American economy are, on the margin, the worst-served by modern credit markets.
Through the 2010s, two things happened in parallel. Regional banks consolidated and retreated from sub-$2M business credit, and venture capital scaled to where anything smaller than a category-winner was no longer worth a partner's time. The middle, where most of the country's real businesses live, was left to merchant cash advance shops and online lead-gen marketplaces whose business model is the application fee, not the loan.
Meridian was built to occupy that middle. We are a private direct lender. We use our own balance sheet and a small set of long-horizon limited partners. We keep every loan we originate. There is no broker between us and the borrower, and no securitization desk waiting to repackage the credit downstream.
That structure is the entire point. It means we have to underwrite the way a community banker would have in 1985: by talking to the operator, walking the operation when it matters, and pricing the actual risk in front of us rather than a model's approximation of it. Slow when speed would be lazy, fast when speed serves the borrower.
Anyone can publish values. These are the three we have actually had to walk away from money to keep.
Our term sheet shows you the all-in cost of capital before you sign. No discovery fees, no surprise origination tied to draw size, no penalty interest that doubles the effective rate on a sixty-day late payment.
We keep the loans we make. The same people who decide to lend you the money are the people who lose it if the underwriting was wrong. It is, on average, a healthier alignment than the alternative.
Every covenant in every Meridian loan document has a plain-English explanation in the cover memo. If we cannot explain what a clause is doing in normal language, the clause does not belong in the document.
We have grown the book deliberately. Faster would have been possible. It would also have required compromises that the founding team was not willing to make.
Meridian opens with a $40M committed capital base from a small group of operating-company founders and family offices. First loan funded ninety days after launch.
Crossed the first $100M in cumulative originations across approximately 380 borrowers. Repeat borrower share reached 41%.
Introduced a dedicated early-stage product after operating-company referrals made it clear that the gap between "bank no" and "venture wrong-shape" was underserved.
Closed an additional $150M of long-dated credit capacity from existing and new institutional partners. Same underwriting discipline, larger plate.
Cumulative originations cross $340M across 1,200+ borrowers. Repeat borrower share holds above 60%, which we treat as the most reliable indicator we are doing this right.
The best small-business lenders have always been the ones who could read an operator across a kitchen table. We are trying to bring that back, with modern tools, but the same posture.
We answer inquiries within one business day. If we are not the right fit, we will tell you that on the first call.