The Approach
Most capital wasn't built for companies like yours.
Banks want collateral and history you don't have yet. Venture wants a swing for the fences and a board seat. If you're already profitable and growing on your own terms, both options ask you to become a different kind of company to get funded. We built the Hill Note for the businesses in between.
Needs history you don't have
Collateral-driven, slow, and unavailable to companies without years of hard assets on the books.
Capital that fits the stage
$250K–$1M, structured around your milestones — not your balance sheet or your willingness to sell equity.
Needs a different outcome
Built for concept-stage bets chasing a category-defining exit — not steady, capital-efficient growth.
In plain terms: the Hill Note is our proprietary investment structure — flexible, milestone-based repayment that scales with your business, paired with real support from our team. It's less dilutive than a venture round and more flexible than a bank loan. You keep running the business. We help you build the value.
Track Record
Deployed alongside owners who kept building.
Across Fund I and Fund II, we've backed founder-led companies in multiple sectors where our capital and community create the most leverage.
Hill Ready
We invest in execution risk, not concept risk.
We're stage-flexible, but we typically back founder-led companies that already have real customers and revenue — and need capital to scale sales, marketing, team, or product execution.
Likely a fit
- Real revenue and paying customers
- Founder or owner still leading, with meaningful control
- Repeatable, capital-efficient business model
- A clear, specific use for the capital
- Path to profitability or free cash flow
- U.S.-domiciled, majority U.S. ownership
Not a fit right now
- Pre-revenue or still proving product-market fit
- Burning cash without a path to profitability
- Founder-led in name only
- Seeking capital to survive rather than to grow
- Currently dependent on predatory debt
- Founders with limited ownership or control
Community
Funding opens the door. The Hill Community keeps it open.
Capital alone doesn't build a company. We connect owners with a network built specifically for the entrepreneurial journey.
Hill Capital Summit
Our flagship gathering, closing with the "Big Ask" — roughly a dozen founders making direct asks to a room of owners and investors.
Breakout Roundtable Series
A virtual program split into a Founder Track and an Ecosystem Partner Track, built around the real problems owners are working through right now.
Ambassador Network
Experienced operators and investors who make introductions, support diligence, and lend credibility to the businesses we back.
"Few things are more worthless or uneasy than capital unemployed, and wealth locked up in vaults in a great city is just as useless to its possessor as heaps of gold to Robinson Crusoe." — James J. Hill, 1838–1916Apply for investment →