# Ecvc Identify Issues Bridge Loan > Identifying issues in a bridge loan agreement requires assessing economic terms against market benchmarks, flagging a personal guaranty as non-standard for an institutional bridge, identifying one-sided amendment provisions, and evaluating revenue milestones for achievability given the company's stage. - Skill: `finchipaiorg/ecvc-identify-issues-bridge-loan` (Agent Skill) - Install (CLI): `npx skillmds@latest add finchipaiorg/ecvc-identify-issues-bridge-loan` - Raw SKILL.md: https://api.skillmd.com/api/skills/finchipaiorg/ecvc-identify-issues-bridge-loan/raw - Safety review: pending - Works with: Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex - Category: Finance & Business - Author: FinchipAIOrg (https://skillmd.com/u/finchipaiorg) - Updated: 2026-09-22 - Page: https://skillmd.com/skills/finchipaiorg/ecvc-identify-issues-bridge-loan --- # Skill: Identify Issues in Bridge Loan Agreement ## 1. Subject-matter triage - Treat the bridge loan draft as an issue-spotting and advisory task, not a markup task. - Read the draft together with the company’s existing agreements, cap table, and financials before prioritizing any issue. - Identify whether the borrower is venture-backed, early-stage, or otherwise in a market context where institutional bridge terms should track startup lending norms. - If the source set contains multiple tranches, milestones, lenders, guarantors, or amendment triggers, enumerate them first and analyze each separately. ## 2. Failure modes the skill is correcting - Economic terms are identified as present without testing whether they are outside market practice for an institutional bridge to a venture-backed company. - Conversion or participation features are described without comparing their compensation effect to the principal amount and expected bridge structure. - A personal guaranty is treated as routine even though it is often non-standard for an institutional bridge. - Amendment mechanics are summarized without checking whether the company can block changes that increase its obligations or impair its rights. - Revenue or performance milestones are accepted without testing whether they are realistically achievable given the company’s stage, projections, and business model. - Default provisions are described without checking cure periods, objective triggers, and the interaction with other financing documents. - Issues are listed as if equally important instead of being ranked by severity and transaction impact. - Recommendations are left abstract instead of giving a concrete revision path tied to the relevant document owner and timing. ## 3. Legal frameworks / domain conventions that apply - Bridge loan economics for venture-backed startups are evaluated against market practice for institutional interim financing; unusual yield, fees, warrants, discounts, conversion ratios, or other hidden economics should be flagged when they materially overcompensate the lender. - Conversion features should be analyzed as part of total lender compensation, with attention to whether they function like equity-side upside rather than conventional debt pricing. - Personal guaranties in institutional startup bridges are atypical under common venture lending practice; they are more consistent with owner-operated or bank-style credit. If present, identify the departure and evaluate whether the company can negotiate removal or limitation. - Amendment and waiver provisions should be tested against baseline consent norms. Provisions that permit unilateral lender-side amendment, or that allow a small voting block to change material borrower obligations, should be flagged where company consent is absent for adverse changes. - Revenue milestone defaults should be tested for achievability using the company’s actual operating scale and forecast. A default tied to a milestone the borrower is unlikely to hit creates an immediate acceleration lever for the lender. - Default provisions should be reviewed for objective triggers, cure rights where curable, and narrowing of subjective standards that allow opportunistic enforcement. - Relevant authority should be cited when the analysis depends on a legal standard from the source set or a generally recognized doctrine, rule, statute, or market convention. Do not state a proposition as if self-evident; anchor it to the controlling rule or convention being applied. ## 4. Analytical scaffolds - Start with the source documents that govern economics, governance, and financial capacity: - the bridge loan draft - the company’s existing financing documents - the cap table and ownership data - the company’s recent and projected financials - For each economic term, identify: - the contractual mechanism - the economic burden or upside - the benchmark it should be compared against - whether it appears above market or otherwise non-standard - the transaction consequence if left unchanged - For any guaranty, walk through: - who guarantees - what obligations are guaranteed - whether the guaranty is limited or full - whether the structure matches an institutional bridge or instead resembles a bank-style credit package - For amendment provisions, determine: - whether company consent is required - whether the lender can act alone or through a holder threshold - whether the provision can be used to worsen economics, change default triggers, or impair payment priority - For revenue or performance milestones, test achievability by comparing: - the milestone text - current run rate or operating scale - forecast timing - seasonality or adoption constraints - the company’s stated business model and stage - For defaults more generally: - check whether the trigger is objective or subjective - check whether a cure period exists and whether it is meaningful - check whether the trigger overlaps with another covenant or reporting duty in the source set - explain the downstream enforcement risk for the company - Rank issues by severity using an ordinal scale: - Critical - High - Medium - Low - Treat as critical any provision that can immediately accelerate, extract non-standard personal exposure, or permit unilateral lender control over material borrower rights. - Treat as high any provision that is materially outside market practice or likely to affect economics, control, or financing flexibility. - For each issue, close the analysis by stating: - the relevant scale or threshold from the documents - the cross-reference to the related clause, schedule, or company document - the downstream consequence to the borrower - When a source document supplies a legal citation, quote it only at the level needed to identify the authority; do not reproduce long verbatim text. ## 5. Vertical / structural / temporal relationships - Analyze the bridge loan in the context of the company’s existing capital structure and any prior debt, preferred equity, or investor rights that could be affected. - Check whether the draft subordinates or conflicts with existing agreements, board approvals, preemptive rights, protective provisions, negative covenants, information rights, or lien restrictions. - Compare any milestones and default dates against the company’s projected runway, funding timeline, and anticipated closing events. - If the bridge is intended to close before a larger financing, assess whether the draft creates timing pressure that could distort the next round or force an early default. - Where rights or obligations depend on holder thresholds, analyze the practical control implications of the cap table and concentration of ownership. ## 6. Output structure conventions - Produce a prioritized issue memorandum. - Use a clear severity legend once at the top, then apply the same ordinal labels consistently. - Organize the memo as issue entries, each with: - provision - issue summary - benchmark or legal standard - severity - why it matters now - recommended fix - Each issue entry should include the quantitative or contextual scale drawn from the source set, the related cross-document interaction, and the borrower consequence. - End with a Recommended Actions block that gives concrete next steps in imperative form, tied to a responsible role and a timing anchor drawn from the transaction timeline or, if none exists, an urgent relative deadline. - If the analysis depends on authority, identify the controlling statute, regulation, rule, case, or recognized market convention by name in the relevant issue entry. - Keep the memo concise, prioritized, and action-oriented; do not provide a general treatise.