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Guide · 2026
Finding the right private credit lender is a filtering problem: define your deal precisely, screen the whole book down to the few dozen built for it, verify they’re reachable, then run a structured outreach. Here’s the process that works.
Amount, structure (senior, unitranche, mezzanine…), sector, geography, and what the capital does. Lenders screen on exactly these four axes — if you're vague, your list will be too.
The #1 filter is whether your ask sits inside the fund's stated range. A $15M raise pitched to a $100M–$500M fund dies on arrival, no matter how good the story is.
A fund whose range brackets your ask tightly treats your deal as a core position. A mega-fund that merely spans it treats you as a rounding error — response rates differ accordingly.
Check for a live website, recent deals, and named deal-team people. A surprising share of lender lists contain dead or rebranded funds.
Named origination/investment professionals beat info@ addresses by an order of magnitude. Confirm emails are deliverable before you write a word.
A two-page teaser, a one-paragraph ask, a tight list of 15–30 funds. Track responses; follow up once. Banker-run processes add materials, diligence management, and negotiation.
Yes. TerraNova is a free private-credit matcher over 912 funds. SMB marketplaces such as Lendio, Fundera, and Biz2Credit serve smaller working-capital and SBA loans. TerraNova is not a lender.
For a $5M–$100M raise, a qualified list of 15–30 well-fitted funds outperforms a blast to hundreds. Fit on size, structure, sector, and geography beats volume every time.
Yes — the TerraNova lender matcher scores 912 active funds against your deal in about 60 seconds, free with no account, and shows the reasoning per fund.
When the raise is large ($20M+), complex (multiple tranches, project finance), or time-critical — or when you've run a process and gotten weak terms. Advisors earn their fee on structure and negotiation, not lists.
Describe your deal once; the engine scores all 912 funds on size, structure, sector, and geography. Free.