You formed the company, you have a plan, and you have no financials to show anyone. Here is what actually decides whether you get capital at this stage, which options are realistic, which ones only sound realistic, and what to do in the first 90 days so the good options stay open.
A new LLC has no revenue, no tax returns and no bank statements worth reading. So every underwriter falls back on the same four things.
Score, utilization, late payments, inquiries, age of accounts. For a new business this is the whole file. It is why two owners with the same idea and the same LLC get completely different outcomes.
Salary, a spouse's income if you share a household, income from another business. Card issuers in particular ask for total annual income, and it is what they size a limit against. It has to be true, and it has to be yours.
A registered entity, an EIN, a business bank account, a phone number and an address that is not a mailbox store. None of this is hard. All of it gets checked, and a missing piece is an easy reason for an automated no.
Most startup loans and advances make the owner personally liable for the balance. The 0% programs we run do not. It is worth asking about every product before you apply, because it changes what you are actually risking.
Ranked by how realistic each one is at zero revenue, not by how often it shows up in articles.
| Option | Realistic at $0 revenue? | Typical amount | Cost | Speed |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0% intro APR business credit cards and lines | Yes, underwritten on the owner | $50K-$250K combined, profile-dependent | 0% for 6-18 months, then standard APR | Days to a few weeks |
| Personal loan used for the business | Yes, if your credit and income support it | $5K-$50K per loan | Fixed APR, often 8%-30%+ | Days |
| Friends, family, own savings | Yes | Whatever they have | Relationships | Immediate |
| SBA microloan (through a nonprofit lender) | Sometimes, with a plan and collateral | Up to $50K, often less | Roughly 8%-13% | Weeks to months |
| SBA 7(a) loan | Rarely without revenue or collateral | Up to $5M | Roughly 10%-13% | 30-90 days |
| Grants | Competitive and slow, but free | $500-$25K | Free, plus your time | Months |
| Merchant cash advance / revenue-based | No, they advance against sales you don't have | Based on revenue | Factor rate 1.1-1.5 | 1-3 days once you have sales |
| Investors | Only with traction or an exceptional team | Varies | Equity | Months |
Ranges are typical 2025-2026 figures from public sources (SBA.gov, NerdWallet, Bankrate). Your actual numbers depend on your profile.
It is not because it is clever. It is because business credit cards are one of the very few products that are underwritten on the owner rather than the company. A bank loan asks how the business has done. A card issuer asks how you have done. For a company that is three weeks old, that is the only question you can answer.
The mechanism is called credit card stacking: several business cards and credit lines with 0% introductory periods, opened in a deliberate order, adding up to a combined limit that can reach $50,000 to $250,000 on a strong profile. Nobody lends you money; the issuers extend credit under their normal programs, and the 0% period is real but temporary, usually 6 to 18 months. We wrote a full plain-language guide to how that works and where people get hurt.
"No revenue needed" is true and it is also easy to misread. It does not mean anyone will be approved. It means the approval is based on your personal credit and your truthfully stated income, not on the company's financials. A new LLC owner with a 740 score, low balances and a real income can do very well. The same owner with maxed cards and two late payments should repair first and apply later, and anyone who tells them otherwise is selling inquiries.
Most of the reasons a new LLC gets declined are boring and fixable. Do these in order and you have removed them.
Get the EIN the day the LLC is approved
Free, from the IRS website, takes ten minutes. Every application will ask for it, and a business with no EIN reads as a business that does not exist yet.
Open a business bank account and run everything through it
Even at zero revenue. Issuers and lenders want to see the business exists separately from you, and later on, statements from this account become the financials you don't have today.
Use a real address and a real phone number
A home address is fine. A registered agent's address is fine. A mailbox store or a virtual office is a common automatic decline for card issuers, because it is what fraud looks like from their side.
Look at your own credit report before anyone else does
Pull all three bureaus. Dispute what is wrong, pay down what is high. Utilization under a third of your limits and no new inquiries for a few months is the single best preparation for a funding round.
Decide what the money is for before you ask for it
Inventory that sells, ads with a measured return, equipment that lets you take jobs, a hire that bills. Capital with a job pays itself back inside the 0% window. Capital without one turns into a balance at 24%.
Then apply, in the right order
Which issuers, in what sequence, how far apart. This is where a new owner either gets most of what their profile allows or burns six inquiries for two cards. It is the part worth getting help with, or at least reading about before you start.
Every application is a hard inquiry. A dozen of them in a month makes the next issuer assume something is wrong, whatever your score says.
It works until it doesn't. Issuers verify, and a card obtained on false numbers can be closed with the full balance due. It is also fraud, and it is your signature.
One account, one card, everything blended. It makes the business unreadable to a lender later and it makes tax season miserable now.
Factor rates of 1.1 to 1.5 with daily holdbacks are the most expensive money in this table. New businesses take them because they are fast. They then spend the next year paying for it.
New owners are the favourite target of funding scams because they don't yet know what normal looks like. Our funding scams guide is a ten-minute read that covers what to ask.
Trading bots, passive income, a mentor who will invest it for you. It is your business carrying the balance. If the plan for the money came from the person selling the funding, walk away.
We work with new business owners on exactly the option this page puts first. Here is how, so you can compare it with anyone else.
We look at your credit before we tell you a range, and we say "not yet" when repairing first would get you more.
You know every issuer and every product before anything is submitted, and you submit each application yourself, with your own true income.
The plan for the end of the 0% period is written before the first application: what the money is for, when it comes back, what gets paid first.
We stay around after the money lands. For a new business, what you do in months one to twelve is the whole point.
No personal guarantee on the programs we run.
Results depend on your credit profile, income and existing accounts. Nothing on this page is a guarantee of approval or of any amount.
A short application, a look at your credit, and a range you can plan around, or a straight "not yet" and what to fix first.
