Welcome to The Credit Bubble
Hi, I’m Derek.
For more than 20 years, I worked in commercial banking—originating loans, structuring deals, and competing for relationships across a wide range of industries and borrower types.
I’ve underwritten hundreds of companies and managed relationships with borrowers across every stage of growth, from early-stage startups to mature, cash-flowing businesses. I’ve always seen it as a privilege to sit across the table from founders and CEOs, ask tough questions, and get a front-row seat to how companies are built, capitalized, and scaled.
This newsletter is an extension of that experience.
The Credit Bubble is where I share observations from the front lines of commercial lending—how markets are shifting, how lenders are responding, and how capital is flowing through the system. It’s part perspective, part pattern recognition, and part storytelling from years of underwriting deals and building borrower relationships. My goal is to create a space for honest, practical conversations about credit—rooted in experience, focused on the real work, and never too far from the next good deal.
💼 Loan of the Week
Each week, I highlight a real credit deal, usually pulled from public filings or lender disclosures. It could be a venture loan with unusual terms, a stretch piece of growth capital, or a surprisingly aggressive ABL facility. I’ll walk through the structure, pricing, and what stands out—sometimes it’s the covenants, sometimes it’s the borrower, and sometimes it’s just a great example of how credit actually works in the real world.
It’s a quick, practical look at the kinds of deals getting done and how lenders are thinking about risk, structure, and competition right now.
🪞 Off Balance Sheet
A weekly mix of credit market commentary, deal stories, and sector-specific deep dives — all delivered with a more personal tone. One week might feature reflections on underwriting in a volatile market, the next a breakdown of a niche lending sector or a story from the deal trenches.
I’ll be inviting readers to share their own experiences too. Maybe it’s a tough investment committee story, a weird deal, a near miss, or something you learned the hard way.
🎙️ Profiles in Credit
This is my interview series with the people who shape the credit markets. Lenders, underwriters, credit officers, and lawyers — professionals who’ve built careers making judgment calls about risk, structure, and borrower relationships.
These conversations are less about headlines and more about how people actually think. We talk through credit frameworks, career-shaping deals, tough calls, and lessons learned from both wins and losses. It’s a chance to step back from the spreadsheets and hear the stories behind the decisions.
🛠️Agentic Underwriting (Coming Soon)
This is where I explore how AI can assist in underwriting real credit deals. In each video, I take a publicly disclosed transaction and walk through the borrower’s business, the structure of the deal, and how agentic AI tools can help analyze, size, and price the credit.
It’s part demo, part analysis, and part experiment in the future of underwriting. The goal is to help analysts and associates sharpen their credit instincts and get comfortable working alongside intelligent agents — whether that’s parsing covenants, modeling repayment, or assessing risk across deal types like venture debt, recurring revenue lines, or complex structured loans.
If you're early in your credit career — or just curious about how AI might actually plug into your workflow — this is the place to dig in.
📬 How to Subscribe (and What You'll Get)
When you hit Subscribe, you unlock full access to everything I publish — a rotating mix of credit market insights, deal analysis, and behind-the-scenes commentary across lending and structured finance.
Here’s what’s inside:
Off Balance Sheet – Weekly essays that blend market commentary, niche sector deep-dives, and deal stories.
Loan of the Week (L.O.T.W.) – Fast, structured breakdowns of real-world credit deals — borrower, lender, terms, covenants, and risk insights.
Profiles in Credit – Candid conversations with the underwriters, lenders, and capital allocators shaping the credit economy.
Agentic Underwriting (Coming Soon) – Tactical walk-throughs and frameworks to sharpen how you think about structure, risk, and opportunity.
You’ll get a few posts each week — some short and tactical, others more reflective or strategic — all designed to help you become a sharper, more thoughtful credit professional.
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👋 About Derek
I’ve spent nearly two decades working with technology and life science companies, helping them raise and manage the capital they need to grow. Over the years, I’ve originated, structured, and managed more than over $1 billion in debt commitments, partnering with founders, CFOs, and boards to get deals done and build long-term relationships.
Before launching Synthase Capital Partners, I was an Executive Director at J.P. Morgan and a Managing Director at Silicon Valley Bank. Those roles gave me a front-row seat to how innovative companies think about risk, scale, and capital—and how lenders need to adapt to keep up.
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