Solve the Capital Stack Before You Write the Loan Request

Most capital requests we see start with a number: “I need $X.” Very few start with a capital stack.

Those aren't the same question. A sponsor who leads with a loan amount is really asking one lender to solve a structuring problem — leverage, cost of capital, recourse, flexibility — that should have been worked out before any single source was approached. A sponsor who leads with the full stack — how much senior debt makes sense, where preferred or mezzanine fits, what the equity is actually solving for — is negotiating from a position of knowing what they need, not hoping a lender tells them.

This isn't a small distinction. The first approach tends to produce a deal that technically closes but is misaligned — over-levered, under-flexible, or exposed on the wrong end of the capital stack for the actual business plan. The second produces a structure built to survive the plan not going exactly as drawn.

Before the loan request gets written, the stack should already be solved. The request is just the last piece of it.