BusinessWeek – In early 2008, Jim Gee hit an impasse. Over the previous five years, Gee had been expanding Trinity Communications, a small cable-TV company in Marion County, Tenn., that he founded in 2003. With startup costs of nearly $3 million, Gee had used personal funds to get the business rolling, laying fiber optic cables across two rural towns and attracting new subscribers. By 2008 he had 600 customers and 6 employees, but Gee couldn’t find additional funds to service new towns and sign new subscribers. <\/p>\n
"Local lending was just not available," says Gee. After he exhausted possibilities at traditional lenders, his attorney recommended that he reach out to a hedge fund that had recently started providing asset-based loans to small companies. So Gee met with Genesis Merchant Partners, a fund launched by the $145 million, Connecticut-based hedge fund Sands Brothers Asset Management. Within two weeks of the meeting, Gee had secured a 15-month, $500,000 loan from Genesis, carrying an interest rate of over 14% after fees, with a 10% penalty if he were to pay it off early. Trinity has nearly tripled its subscriber base since it secured the loan, says Gee. His company is now taking out a second loan for a similar amount from Genesis to continue its growth plan. He doesn’t consider the terms particularly onerous: "I was open to go as high as 15%." <\/p>\n