In a market recalibrating to higher rates and tighter risk tolerances, a growing cohort of practitioners is re-wiring how lenders decide whom to back, and when to intervene.

Among the notable voices is Sharon Davidor, whose work in Innovation Banking helped shift growth lending from reactive rule-keeping to proactive guidance, and who now brings that lens to her role as an Technology Banking Associate at Jefferies.

Ms Davidor obtained her Master of Business Administration (MBA) from Cornell University’s Johnson Graduate School of Management, receiving the covered Forté Foundation Fellowship, a competitive, merit-based award, and has been elected a Fellow of the Commonwealth Academy of Leadership & Management and a Fellow of the National Institute of Credit Administration.

We spoke about her “data-led lending” philosophy, why it expands access to non-dilutive capital, and how early-warning systems can make portfolios safer without shutting innovators out.

Q: Your title speaks to a shift “from ‘No’ to ‘Know.’” What does that mean in practice?

Davidor: For many founders, a credit decision feels binary: yes or no. In high-growth businesses, especially subscription software and data companies, the better posture is “know.” If lenders know how the business truly earns and keeps revenue, they can design covenants and reporting that surface drift early.

That turns surprises into conversations and allows more companies to qualify for responsible debt. It’s not a softer standard; it’s a more accurate one. Q: Where did this approach take shape for you?

Davidor: During my time at CIBC, I worked on growth-capital facilities for sponsor-backed technology companies. Traditional leverage ratios didn’t tell us enough about the risk in recurring-revenue models.

We rebuilt the decision flow around the operating physics: net revenue retention and its trajectory, gross-margin integrity, conversion reliability in the pipeline, and concentration risk, including correlated cohorts, not just one big logo. Then we paired that with a compact early-warning grid and pre-agreed remedies. The outcome was calmer committees, faster decisions, and borrowers who knew exactly what would happen if a metric moved.

Q: You talk about “writing covenants the P&L can feel.” How is that different from standard practice?

Davidor: Standard covenants often react after the fact. In subscription businesses, momentum matters. So instead of just a static retention floor, we watch the slope over time; instead of generic concentration caps, we map clusters that behave as one. Liquidity tools step up proportionally when stress appears, and step down when it clears. The borrower feels the guidance in real time, not a cliff at quarter-end. That protects lenders and keeps oxygen for growth.

Q: How does this broaden access to capital rather than narrow it?

Davidor: Predictability is inclusive. When founders can see the guardrails and lenders get timely signals, more “borderline” applicants can be responsibly approved. The underwriting becomes less about storytelling and more about shared facts.

I’ve seen teams fund companies that might have been declined under blunt ratios, because the data showed resilient cohorts, or because a temporary margin dip had a clear, time-boxed cause with compensating controls. A transparent path to remediation also means amendments are constructive rather than punitive. That keeps deserving borrowers in the system.

Q: Give us an anonymized example of what changes in the room.

Davidor: Imagine a mid-market vertical-SaaS company with a planned onboarding wave. A conventional view might see the margin dip and get nervous. A data-led approach sets a margin floor with a temporary carve-out, asks for tighter retention bands during the period, and pre-wires a modest cash-sweep step-up if pipeline conversion wobbles. Everyone agrees on the playbook. When conversion softens, the conversation has already been arranged. Execution becomes a series of known adjustments instead of a crisis.

Q: You’ve emphasized surveillance that creates “months of lead time.” Why is lead time the core advantage?

Davidor: Because time is the currency of good outcomes. If a lender sees drift two months earlier, there’s room to rebalance go-to-market motion, pause nonessential commitments, and adjust exposure intelligently. Loss severity falls, relationship equity rises, and the portfolio behaves better through cycles. Lead time is also what turns a committee from adversarial to collaborative. We’re not arguing about whether there’s a problem, we’re aligning on the fix.

Q: Critics might say this is just sophisticated packaging for tighter terms.

Davidor: It’s the opposite. The point isn’t to tighten indiscriminately; it’s to align accurately. If covenants reflect economic truth and reporting is decision-useful, you don’t need to over-engineer the rest. Borrowers trade a bit more transparency for a lot more predictability. That’s a fair exchange, particularly for companies that would otherwise be forced into expensive dilution or shut out altogether.

Q: Your method also insists on “memo architecture” and training. Why do process and pedagogy matter so much?

Davidor: Systems beat heroics. A great memo leads with the operating model, retention physics, margin levers, concentration map, then walks through terms and remedies. If analysts and associates learn to think that way, approval quality rises and cycles compress.

At CIBC, we built a short training sequence that made judgment teachable. The benefit is compounding: borrowers encounter consistent expectations, committees see cleaner packages, and institutions can do more good work with the same headcount.

Q: How do your recognitions play into this, Forté, FCALM, NICA, and what do they signify about your work?

Davidor: The Forté Foundation Fellowship is a merit-based, competitive award; I’m grateful for the investment it represents in leadership and professional excellence. FCALM and NICA are invitation-only fellowships with peer-reviewed standards. To me, those elections say the profession values not just outcomes, but ethics and repeatability, doing hard things the right way, and in a way others can adopt. That’s the spirit of data-led lending.

Q: You’re moving into investment banking at Jefferies. How does this thinking travel from credit to M&A and capital markets?

Davidor: The through-line is alignment under uncertainty. In M&A, you can track integration risk the way you track customer health, simple indicators tied to pre-agreed actions. In capital raises, you can help issuers present operating truth cleanly so investors price the story on facts rather than noise. Whether it’s a loan or a sale, early, proportionate responses beat late, blunt ones.

Q: For founders reading this, what should they do tomorrow to be “credit-ready” in a data-led regime?

Davidor: Make your revenue engine legible. Cohort ARR broken into new, expansion, contraction and churn; stage-by-stage conversion with a view to reliability; a clear concentration map including channel clusters; and a cash bridge with variance commentary. If your internal pack tells that story, a good lender can write covenants you can live with. You’ll spend more time building and less time decoding the ask.

Q: And for lenders who want to broaden access without raising risk?

Davidor: Pick five indicators you’ll actually act on. Tie each to a proportional next step. Share the map with borrowers on day one. If a metric moves, meet early and follow the playbook. You’ll reduce defaults, improve approval throughput and earn a reputation for fairness. That reputation expands your opportunity set more than any single clause ever could.

Q: Final thought: why does this matter beyond individual deals?

Davidor: Access to well-structured, non-dilutive capital is a growth engine. When credit is predictable and aligned to real economics, portfolios are safer, founders keep more ownership and more innovation reaches scale. That’s good for lenders, for companies and, ultimately, for the economy. “From ‘No’ to ‘Know’” is just a shorthand for treating risk as an enabler of opportunity instead of a gate against it.