What

Nitra is a New York-based startup aspiring to be an all-in-one financial solution for the healthcare space. Founded in 2021, Nitra raised $62M in Seed funding in 2022, including a $45M debt facility, from investors like Andreessen Horowitz, New Enterprise Associates, and Pantera Capital.

In the wake of the run on Silicon Valley Bank, Nitra took it upon itself to offer short-term financing to healthcare startups affected by SVB. It offered corporate cards with up to $200,000 in credit, as well as unsecured short-term loans.

Why 

Jonathan Chen, Nitra’s Founder and CEO, said his startup was not immediately affected by SVB’s woes, but friends’ startups were. When these struggling colleagues reached out for short-term loans, Nitra realized it had the rails in place to offer immediate help to peer startups, given that it offers loans to the doctors’ offices that make up its client base.

“We should offer the card to folks who need immediate credit,” Chen concluded at the time, while recognizing that, on the business side, extending loans to fellow healthcare startups could help foster business relationships.

How

Nitra’s leadership team got into “a war room,” Chen said. “Instead of figuring out how to survive SVB, we were figuring out how to help other people survive,” he elaborated. The team reached out to their investors to see if their portfolio companies in the healthcare space were affected, and reached out to other VC contacts to do the same. Nitra’s employees then split into relevant teams: determining the loan terms of the program; changing the flow of its app to let relevant parties apply for loans; strategizing social media and other communications channels to solidify messaging; and establishing risk-management protocols.

The team worked until 1am on Friday night, resuming their efforts at 7am before a social media blast. “That effort went somewhat viral,” Chen said. “We probably reached over half a million eyeballs.”

The Nitra team then liaised directly with applicant startups to determine the terms of their loans. They also filtered out fraudulent applications—people applying with Gmail accounts and reluctant to share key loan-term documentation. “Our interview process was fairly hands-on, because the situation calls for that,” Chen said.

Although regulatory backstops have largely stymied demand for immediate credit, many applicant startups have nevertheless taken Nitra up on its loan offers in an effort to diversify their finances. Regardless, Chen said Nitra’s efforts successfully developed relationships with other healthtech and healthcare companies.

“Our exposure in the healthcare space has opened up,” he said. “We were able to talk to hundreds of new startups, and a lot of them share the same core customer segment, so conversations that weren’t happening before are happening now.”

Chen envisions using those new bonds to open up cross-pollination opportunities, including in customer acquisition and product validation. Nitra’s brand recognition has increased thanks to these efforts, Chen said, and he expects the startup to become a leader in the industry.