Lended

Lended’s 2025 Year in Review: • $40mil+ funded • 20+ searchers helped find funding • 0.375% lower rates vs competing term sheets • 54.3 day average time to close Proud of the progress this year. Excited for what’s in store for our clients in 2026.

What actually kills most SBA deals (from seeing hundreds at Lended): 1. Buyer doesn't have a clear source of the 10% injection 2. Seller has messy financials that can't survive underwriting 3. Deal is priced way above what the cash flow supports 4. Buyer waits too long and loses the deal to someone faster Most of these are fixable if you catch them early.

the June 2025 SBA rule changes killed a lot of the creative financing that made deals work at the lower end of the market. partial standby seller notes: gone. phased ownership transfers: gone. seller retaining equity without personally guaranteeing your loan: gone. deals that closed clean in 2023 don’t close the same way anymore. this is why you need to talk to someone who’s closed deals under the new rules — not someone teaching from a 2022 playbook.

the best time to get SBA prequalified is 6 months before you have a deal. 99% of buyers wait until they’re under LOI. the buyers who close in 7 weeks are the ones who already fixed their docs. the buyers who close in 14+ weeks — or don’t close at all — are the ones who didn’t. there is no world in which waiting helps you.

the seller retaining even 1% equity after your acquisition? under the new rules they have to personally guarantee your entire SBA loan for 2 years. most sellers don’t know this. most buyers don’t know this. it’s killed a lot of partial buyout deals since June 2025 and most people in the space are still not talking about it.

there’s an SBA rule that almost nobody in the acquisition space talks about. it lets you stack $5M per business — not $5M total. and it’s sitting right in the SOP. Let me explain 👇

Looking ahead to 2026: • Expand to $200M+ in pre-qualified listings • Give searchers direct access to review all pre-qualified opportunities • Bring more of the process in-house • Target ~45-day average closes • 1-day turnaround on term sheets