We are eight months in — what financing can we actually get?

There is real money available at eight months, but the menu is short and the price is higher, and the honest framing is that you are paying a premium for a track record you have not built yet. At $40,000 a month with positive margins you are past the hardest stage — most of the doors that are closed to you close at zero revenue, not at month eight.

• Revenue-Based Financing: usually wants six months of deposits, which you already have
• Merchant Cash Advance: available almost immediately, and the most expensive option on this list
• Equipment Financing: available now whenever the money is buying a titled or resaleable asset
• Startup Financing paths built around owner credit rather than business history
• SBA Microloans through nonprofit intermediaries, which routinely fund businesses under two years old up to $50,000

The warning is about size. At $40,000 in monthly revenue most revenue-based offers land somewhere between half a month and one and a half months of that revenue — think $20,000 to $60,000, not $250,000. Applying for a number your file cannot support burns the application and leaves an inquiry behind, and lenders can see the pattern when you come back.

“The cheapest capital at month eight is usually the customer who pays you in fifteen days instead of forty-five.”

Startup Financing and Revenue-Based Financing are where most eight-month files land, with a Business Line of Credit as the thing to graduate into around month eighteen. Call the desk before you apply anywhere — at this stage the sequence matters more than the product.