IIRC there is at least one Silicon Valley example of this already: Zappos pre Amazon acquisition, debt from Wells Fargo. It was forced upon Zappos b/c VC fundraising dried up, not a deliberate choice, but ended up working out well b/c its GMV was both growing and becoming predictable.
I believe this article is focused on a different type of debt - "recurring revenue securitization" (focused on companies w/ a SaSS business model).
This type of financial instrument is different from a traditional venture / bank debt instrument in a couple ways:
1. it can be more favorable to startups by making payments a % of revenue instead of a fixed amount (ala ISA's)
2. the lender can earn higher interest by "securitizing" (e.g. pooling together) multiple loans and selling them. this allows the lender to move some debt off the balance sheet and in turn deploy the cash for higher yield
3. over time, the lender could provide more favorable terms by creating more accurate risk models by ingesting data from sources like Stripe and Shopify across companies and then building proprietary data sets to manage default risk. I believe Clearbanc does something similar today.
