Ann: Openpay secures UK funding facility, page-53

Debt is leverage. Money makes money. Uber, Airbnb, Netflix all became behemoths using debt facilities. Your perception is strange.

Quotes from https://link.medium.com/pig1I40de7

"The Financing Ecosystem for Startups Offers Up Lots of Choices

Startup costs for new businesses vary significantly, from just a few thousand dollars for home-based microbusinesses to millions of dollars for technology startups and big brick-and-mortar shops. There are three main ways to fund a new company: personal savings, debt, or equity.

Of these options, debt is the most popular. According to the Kauffman Foundation’s survey of more than 5,000 startups, upwards of one-third of founders primarily used debt to launch their companies.

We often equate equity with innovation, glamour, and big money. And when we think of debt, we conjure the mom and pop shop down the road from our house. But the truth is that equity actually plays a very small role in funding all types of startups. Just around 10% of startup funding comes from venture capitalists and angel investors. And as successful startups mature, they’re less likely to use equity and more likely to use debt.
Not only is debt the most common way to finance a business, but it is also the more predictive of success. We analyzed profit data for businesses that obtained loans through the Fundera platform in the last three months. More than three-quarters of the businesses were consistently profitable. In contrast, only a tiny fraction of venture-backed startups go on to turn a profit and provide projected returns to investors."

"Rapid growth goes hand in hand with high funding amounts."

"As a company matures and figures out what it’s doing, it’s more likely to take on debt. Although we don’t normally think of big-name companies borrowing money, it’s actually very common.

Netflix, for example, is a big time borrower. Since the company started in 1997, executives have raised more than $20 billion in debt. That figure is 200 times higher than the $103.9 millon of venture capital that the company raised through the end of their Series E round! The amount of debt often dwarfs equity as a company grows and finds its footing.

Netflix has actually been very open about using debt to pay for original content creation and subscriber growth. These are the next frontiers for Netflix as its DVD business continues to shed users. On their website, Netflix reminds investors that debt is the lower cost, more efficient alternative to venture capital for growth:
In optimizing our balance sheet, we strive for the capital structure that results in the lowest weighted average cost of capital. Given low interest rates, the tax deductibility of debt and our low debt to enterprise value, financing growth through the debt market is currently more efficient than issuing equity.
Netflix and other big startups tend to use debt financing later in their business’s history. But if you’re not a tech giant, and rather a younger business trying to get capital, debt financing could be a part of the mix from the start."

Also your quotes re no fundamentals... did you read their report on May 2020 being their strongest month ever off the back of tech upgrades and new partnerships, like with JD Sport UK... (203% increase in active plans, a 113% lift in active customers, and a 63% jump in active merchants on its platform)... Its active merchants now include the likes of Bunnings Warehouse, Bupa, JD Sports UK (£2.1 billion street wear and sports apparel company), Repco, Smiggle, and Spotlight. These aren't little corner shops. If all of that are just sentimentalism then they're very good sentimentalists.

There's always hype in equity trading. Human nature, FOMO... whole indices go up and down like a yoyo because of one tweet or a video of a CEO smoking. Heavy weight investors lose as no name investors win and vice versa. Smart money is a relative term...