Net 30, August 2026: We launched a $500M fund

Quick thank you before anything else. The response to the first few issues was better than I expected, and the part that surprised me most was how many of you replied with your own numbers. Founders forwarding me their term sheets. A fractional CFO who sent a side-by-side of two PO facilities and asked which one was quietly worse. That is exactly the conversation this newsletter was built for. Keep going.

This month is a big one. Bridge has launched another lending product, this time to directly finance consumer brands in retail like Walmart & Sam’s Club. We’ll get into what it is, and why we built it.

I’m Mike Gelb I run Community Growth at Bridge. You can reply to this email to
book a call with me or schedule time here to learn more.

TLDR: what’s moving in CPG capital this month

1. Bridge launched a $500M fund. We were a marketplace running on other people’s capital. Now we lend our own. No syndicate to wait on, and we can fund production before the PO document exists.
2. From the desk: it’s load-in season and everyone is short. Holiday and Q1 reset production deposits are coming due right now, months before a single one of those units gets scanned.
3. Deep dive: inventory is a debt problem, not an equity problem. The math on funding a $2M production run with equity instead of debt, and why that mistake doesn’t reverse.

1. Bridge launched a $500M fund, and here’s the part that matters to you

Up to now, Bridge was a lending marketplace, and not a small one. We closed over $500M across the platform last year. But a marketplace runs on other people’s capital. Every yes has a second yes behind it, and you don’t control the timing of that second yes.

With this fund, we’re lending our own balance sheet. When you get a yes from us, there’s no syndicate to wait on and no third party deciding whether your order gets funded. We fund the production and the purchase order directly.

The part I’d actually underline: we can fund before the PO.

Here’s the problem the fund was built for. By the time the PO is in your hand, you’ve already needed the cash for weeks. Production runs on a deposit, your co-man wants 30% or 50% down to hold a run, and that deposit comes due long before the retailer ever cuts a PO number. So the standard PO financing product shows up late to its own party. It finances the paperwork, not the production.

We don’t need the actual PO document in hand. A demand plan, a buy plan, or the retailer’s own forecast gives us enough to underwrite. Once there’s a real retail commitment, we can move.

2. From the desk: “I don’t have a revenue problem, I have an August problem”

That’s close to a direct quote from a founder call two weeks ago, and some version of it has come up in almost every conversation I’ve had this month.

August is the worst cash month of the year for a lot of you and it has nothing to do with how well you’re selling. Holiday sets, Q1 modular resets, and the front half of next year’s plan all convert into production commitments right now. You’re paying deposits in August on units that ship in October and get paid for somewhere around January. That’s a five month gap between cash out and cash in, sitting on top of whatever working capital you already have tied up in current turns.

The pattern I keep seeing: brands underwrite their own liquidity off the annual number instead of the monthly trough. On paper the year works. In August the year doesn’t matter, because the deposit is due Thursday.

Two things worth doing before September. Build the trough, not the average, and know your worst week between now and January. And have the financing conversation before the co-man’s deadline, not after, because a facility set up in advance costs you the same as one set up in a panic, except you can actually use the first one.

3. Funding inventory with equity is the most expensive mistake in CPG

One of our partners scaled and later sold his brand in a very successful exit. While he was growing it, he raised equity to fund a large PO. He’ll tell you himself: if he’d used production financing instead, he’d have walked away with a lot more.

Think about what that trade actually was. He sold a permanent piece of the company to cover inventory that turned back into cash in a quarter. The dilution doesn’t reverse when the invoice gets paid. He gave up a slice of every dollar the business would ever make in order to solve a problem that was going to solve itself in 90 days.

Debt does the opposite. It’s finite and it’s temporary, and it’s designed for exactly this. You draw it, the inventory ships, the invoice gets paid, you pay it back. Then you own the same percentage of your company you owned before, minus a few months of interest.

Run it on a $2M production run. Finance it with debt and you carry interest for the couple of months until the invoice clears, and then you’re back where you started on the cap table. Finance it with equity and you sell whatever slice of the company $2M buys at today’s valuation. If the business is worth five times more in three years, that slice just cost you five times what it looks like today, and you can’t buy it back at the old price. Nobody offers a repurchase option on a seed round.

My two cents: equity is for the things that build lasting value. A new facility, a real team, infrastructure that outlives the quarter. Inventory isn’t one of those. Inventory is a timing problem with a known end date, and timing problems are what debt is for. Equity dilutes you. ABLs cap you. MCAs bleed you before you’ve collected. Production financing is the only one of the four that’s actually looking at where you’re going.

Landing a Walmart purchase order takes years. Funding the inventory load-in before your first invoice gets paid is where most new suppliers stall.

We closed $800K in two weeks to support the load-in, in time to hit the ship window. Underwriting was on the order and the retailer, not the balance sheet. The brand kept its equity and made its date.

About Bridge

Bridge is a direct lender and Walmart’s official financing partner for suppliers. PO financing, AR financing, and growth capital for consumer brands scaling into major retail, now backed by our own $500M fund.

We funded over $500M for CPG brands in 2025 & only have one goal:

Making sure the capital stack never becomes the reason you lose the win. You can book a call with me here.

BY THE WAY – we have a new site! Check it out at bridge.co

CPG Events I’m Attending

• Newtopia Now (Denver): Aug 18 to 20, Colorado Convention Center
• Beanstalk (Brooklyn): Sept 14 to 16, Industry City
• Consumer Impact Summit (Bentonville): Sept 15 to 17, at the Ledger

Bridge Pantry Update

Last time it was Dog Sauce. Two more made it into the Bridge pantry this month.

First, Onyx Coffee. If you’ve spent any time in Bentonville, you already know them. The thing I love about them is the radical price transparency. Every coffee shows what they paid for it, what it scored, and who they bought it from. Try getting that on your last invoice from anyone.

The other is Roxberry, the first modern soda made for kids with a simple promise: real fruit and veggies, 5 grams of sugar, no fake stuff. It launched into 2,200-plus Walmart stores across all 50 states this year, with Kroger and H-E-B close behind.