u/ConsciousLobster7369

most of what i am seeing under $100k is food, and equipment costs for food concepts usually push you well past headline number anyway. or it is retail, which means taking on lease and kind of defeats point of staying under six figures.

what i am filtering for is home service, no storefront, territory model, and demand that does not disappear when money gets tight. that last part is where most of options fall apart. everyone calls their concept recession resistant, but then actual service turns out to be discretionary. exterior cleaning, lawn work, things people tend to cut first. categories that seem to hold up are ones tied to code requirement or genuine risk. has anyone here actually closed on something in this range where demand was need driven in practice, not just in pitch?

about eight months into building this. revenue is growing, but we are still too early for most banks to take us seriously, and we are not ready to raise equity either. what funding options are actually available to companies in year one? i am looking for something practical and relatively quick, not another SBa option that takes months to get through. curious what other founders used at this stage and what actually worked.

started company six years ago with one other person, back then conversations were constant and pretty direct. now we are at 55 people, i have gone weeks without anyone telling me something is wrong. part of that is probably because people are more careful about how they interact with me now. i had heard people talk about CEo loneliness lot and honestly thought it was exaggerated until recently. for those who have been through this as company grew, what actually helped?