He told me not to sign it. I almost did anyway.
Sofia had a $90K MCA term sheet in her inbox when she logged in for her advisor session. The advisor read it once, called the broker on speaker, and walked her out of a deal that would have cost her almost $34K in factor over six months.
Sofia ran a small e-commerce brand with strong seasonality. She had hit a slow February and was looking at a $90K cash advance to cover inventory pre-buy for the spring. The factor on the offer was 1.38, with a 6-month payback window and daily ACH debits at 12 percent of deposits.
Her personal profile was a 712 mid-FICO. Her business profile had three furnished trade lines. She was quietly fundable through cleaner channels, but the broker she had been talking to had quietly steered her toward the highest-margin product on his desk.
She had the term sheet in PDF, the wire instructions in her email, and the funding date set for Tuesday.
The advisor session stopped the wire. The same week, the platform repackaged the request as a structured working capital line, sourced two real bank offers, and Sofia signed at less than a third of the cost.
- 01Stopped the MCA wire 18 hours before funding
- 02Pulled trailing-12 deposits and inventory data to build a real working capital packet
- 03Sourced 2 conventional working capital offers with monthly debit (not daily) and fixed terms
- 04Held the personal profile clean during the 21-day diligence window
- 05Closed at a quarter of the all-in cost of the MCA structure
“I had the wire instructions open in another tab. He read the term sheet for ninety seconds and said don't.”