Most lending guides tell you a startup can't get an SBA loan. The public record says otherwise. Over the last five years 110,821 SBA loans went to businesses under two years old, which is 32% of all approvals, and 54,880 of those were loans that opened the doors in the first place. Pick your state to see who wrote them.
Encouraging people to borrow without showing the downside would be dishonest. Of SBA loans approved 2011–2017 that have reached a final outcome:
Being brand new raised the odds of losing the loan from 6.2% to 9.1%. Real, worth respecting, and far smaller than the difference between borrowing in a boom and borrowing into a crash. You are signing a personal guarantee either way, so size the loan accordingly.
See the full outcome data and how it is measuredRanked by how many under-two-year-old businesses were approved nationwide. The share column is the giveaway: an industry where most borrowers are new is one where lenders are comfortable with no operating history.