Back in October of 2024, I wrote a piece called "You Asked For Money, Here It Is", walking through, step by step, how I personally pulled together $750,000 in financing without giving up a single point of equity. A lot of you used that piece as a blueprint. Some of you are still messaging me about it. So today's edition is a bit of a sequel, because the rules of the game just changed, and if you're a founder, operator, or small business owner who's been sitting on an SBA application, this affects you directly.
The Small Business Administration just did something it hasn't done since 2010: it raised the ceiling on how much government-backed capital a single borrower can stack. Go borrow the damn money. Here’s this week’s edition of The Dime💰.
Quick intro if you're new here. I'm Carl, by day I run Joseph Black Law PLLC, a New York law practice where I work on startup and venture capital transactions, entertainment and music deals, and investment fund structures. So if you need help acquiring a company with SBA funding I can help you with that. By night, and honestly during a lot of stolen lunch hours, I write The Dime💰.
The Dime💰 exists for one reason: the most interesting financial stories in America run through culture, and almost nobody covers them with both the spreadsheet and the source material open at the same time. The music press covers the artist. The financial press covers the companies. The Dime💰 covers the deals.
THE OLD MATH
For fifteen years, if you were borrowing through SBA's two flagship programs, the 7(a) program (working capital, equipment, refinancing, acquisitions) and the 504 program (real estate, heavy equipment), you could combine a maximum of $5 million across both. That number hasn't moved since Obama's first term, which means it hasn't moved since the iPhone 4.
THE NEW MATH
Administrator Kelly Loeffler approved a rule, effective July 4, that doubles the cumulative cap to $10 million, $5 million from 7(a) stacked on top of $5 million from 504. She did this unilaterally, using authority she already had, without waiting on Congress. That matters, because the individual per-program caps (the $5 million ceiling on 7(a) specifically) can only be changed by legislation, and that legislation, the Made in America Manufacturing Finance Act, has passed the House but is still stuck waiting on the Senate.
So think of it this way: Congress controls the size of each individual bucket. Loeffler just gave borrowers permission to use two buckets at once. If Congress approves an increase of each individual bucket now you'll be able to stack both. We could be looking at a $15 - $20 Million situation in the near future.
WHY NOW
The timing isn't random. This is squarely aimed at manufacturing, one of the administration's stated priorities, and it follows more than a year of lobbying from banks and trade groups who've been asking for exactly this. TD Bank's SBA head made the inflation argument plainly: a $5 million cap set in 2010 would need to be somewhere between $7.5 and $8 million just to keep pace with where the dollar sits today. Ohio State's Walter Hill told the Senate Small Business Committee back in May that raising the limits was fiscally sound and, in his words, economically necessary.
WHO THIS ACTUALLY HELPS
This is where you need to read the fine print instead of the headline. The 504 program only funds real estate and heavy equipment. So the "$10 million" number is really only accessible to businesses that have a real estate or equipment component to their capital needs, think restaurant franchise groups, corporate daycare chains, hotel operators, manufacturers buying machinery.
If you're running a professional services business, a firm, an agency, a practice, you don't have a real estate or equipment need that qualifies you for 504 dollars. You're still capped at whatever 7(a) alone will lend you, and structuring something like a large ownership change or buyout stays exactly as difficult as it was last month. TD Bank's Tom Pretty made this point directly to American Banker: raising the 7(a) cap by itself would be the cleaner fix for a much wider set of businesses than this stacking maneuver.
THE TAKEAWAY
This is a real, meaningful expansion of borrowing capacity for the businesses it touches. It rewards businesses with hard assets and leaves everyone else waiting on the Senate to finish what the House already started. If you're in that second bucket, don't wait around for the cumulative cap to help you. Go back to my October 2024 piece, get your documentation and structure right, and go get the $5 million that's already available to you under 7(a) as it stands today.
I'll keep tracking the Made in America Manufacturing Finance Act and let you know the moment it clears the Senate, because if it does, we're not talking about a $10 million stack anymore, we're talking about a genuinely higher individual ceiling for everybody. Don't be stingy with the 🏀. Pass this to a friend.
See Y'all Next Week,
CJB