PitchBook Analyst Note: Venture Debt Overview

As our analysts begin more direct coverage of venture debt, this note sets out to define how PitchBook will research and analyze the growing space. Venture debt is an undercover trend rising throughout the venture industry, and is unique in structure due to its uses, protections available to lenders and how it interacts with equity investments to fuel company growth. This note describes how the market is evolving to spur the use of debt, how lenders interact with VCs and which types of debt are commonly used within the venture ecosystem.

Note: We updated this note on October 14, 2019 to remove an erroneous categorization of Trinity Capital Investment as a specialty bank rather than a venture debt lender.