Growing up in a rural Pennsylvania community about 70 miles from Pittsburgh, George Cook worked for the family business, a community bank that has been in the family for six generations. Cook worked in branches and did “every job imaginable,” he says. “I quickly fell in love with commercial lending, meeting the entrepreneurs, hearing their stories, and connecting them to the resources they need to take that next step on their journey.”

The experience also gave him a front row seat to the consolidation in banking that has whittled the nation’s community banks from 30,000 to just 4,000 today. With them have gone the local lending relationships that once supported local businesses. “Underwriting decisions moved from across the street to across the country,” says Cook, who in 2017 cofounded Honeycomb Credit, an investment crowdfunding site that enables small businesses to tap retail investors — often their customers, neighbors and followers — for fairly priced loans.

“I saw an opportunity in the market to reach younger and smaller businesses that are being left behind and to help them on their path to bankability.”

Since then, the Pittsburgh-based lending platform has helped thousands of local bakeries, brewpubs, artisans and mom & pops, the kinds of businesses that anchor local economies, raise close to $50 million for equipment purchases, working capital and expansion. “It takes a lot to run a business, and having community support while you build makes the difference,” says Cook. 

Honeycomb itself is doing some consolidating. In December, it absorbed Raise Green, a crowdlending site for eco-focused companies and projects. Earlier this month, it acquired IFundWomen, or IFW, a crowdfunding site that provides coaching, capital, corporate grants, and SBA loans to female entrepreneurs. IFW has helped women-led businesses raise nearly $200 million in grants and loans since 2016. 

Cook and IFW founder Karen Cahn saw a natural synergy. The acquisition “provided us with the opportunity to create a complete platform for businesses at every stage of their funding journey,” says Cook. 

Honeycomb has opted for more traditional avenues to fuel its growth. Last June, the crowdfunding company scored a $6 million “seed+” funding round co-led by SustainVC, Muditā Venture Partners, and the American Family Insurance Institute for Corporate and Social Impact. This month, Upstart Co-Lab invested $750,000 in Honeycomb. The funding, from Upstart’s inclusive creative economy fund, will support what Upstart’s Laura Callanan sees as “the infrastructure” to support creative small businesses and makers.  

With economic uncertainty likely to hit small businesses the hardest, Cook is ready to cushion the blow. Creative financing solutions that can help small businesses adjust to a turbulent economic environment may not be available just when they’re most needed, he frets. “That’s why flexible, community-driven funding like Honeycomb’s is more important than ever.”