Send in the angels
FOUR YEARS in, with DRT hitting its stride, Danielle had another big idea: technology-assisted media monitoring. No other company in Jamaica or the Caribbean was offering this service, and one of her clients – all the way from Panama – was eager to find a media-monitoring agency in the region. She began to do her research, spending the better part of a year looking for technology that could be tailored to the Jamaican and regional landscape, but could find nothing. Her father, an entrepreneur who had long worked in technology, helped her search, and he eventually found a solution, but it came with one big problem – a hefty price tag of US$250,000 to customise and roll out the service for use locally and regionally. Where was that money going to come from?
The banks were definitely not biting.
“I went to my bank, no dice. I went to another bank I used to have an account with, they said I didn’t have any collateral. I have a business based on intellect and creative talent, and that’s not exactly collateral, so no one was offering me a loan,” she explained. “We had our financial statements together – audited statements, everything. I’m doing what they keep saying small business people don’t do, so why is nobody paying me attention?”
Sagicor Bank was her last stop, and there she finally found a champion.
“They went to the Development Bank of Jamaica (DBJ) on our behalf and actually got the loan, which was amazing. Sagicor really fought for us, and I’ll always feel indebted to them,” she said.
Although the DBJ was on board, she still had to find some form of collateral, and the loan was expensive when it came to repayment.
“They had to get paid first, so that just ate through the cash. Any cheque that came in went to them first, so we were running out of working capital.”
‘I have a business based on intellect and creative talent, and that’s not exactly collateral, so no one was offering me a loan.’