Hum-an Story: JoBeth Abecassis, Hum Capital Managing Director

JoBeth Abecassis, Managing Director @ Hum Capital

In this Hum-an Story, we sit down with Hum Capital Managing Director JoBeth Abecassis to trace her journey from asset-based lending to co-founding a lending platform for consumer brands to venture debt — and why she believes Hum is building something she’s been waiting for her entire career.

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Q: Your career has spanned asset-based lending, consumer brand financing, venture debt, and now Hum. What’s the thread that connects it all?

JoBeth: For me, credit is a meaningful tool for a business at every stage of its lifecycle. Giving businesses the ability to unlock non-dilutive capital at crucial moments in their growth story has been a key driver for me across each of my roles in the space. Every lending product I’ve worked with — asset-based lending, inventory financing, venture debt — has its own logic, its own risk profile, and its own ideal borrower. Each opportunity has allowed me to appreciate a different lending landscape and to match a business to the structure that actually fits it, and that is work I find genuinely compelling. Ultimately, it is my curiosity and my fundamental belief in credit as a funding resource that has been the throughline.

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Q: Tell us about Assembled Brands. What problem were you solving?

JoBeth: When we started Assembled Brands, the direct-to-consumer (DTC) market was exploding. Brands were building real businesses with strong inventory turns, loyal customers, and growing revenue, but they weren’t generating the kind of traditional receivables that most lenders knew how to underwrite. The institutional lending market was lagging behind a seismic shift in consumer buying patterns, and we saw an opportunity to fill that gap with a non-dilutive credit product built specifically for these businesses. Assembled offered inventory-only lending to consumer brands that deserved access to capital but didn’t fit the conventional mold. It was a formative experience in understanding how much the right capital structure can unlock for a business, and how much is left on the table when lenders aren’t willing to think creatively.

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Q: After working in ABL and then venture debt, what made you decide to join Hum?

JoBeth: Hum felt like the natural convergence of everything I’d been working toward. Across ABL, consumer brand lending, and venture debt, I kept running into the same friction: real, creditworthy SMBs that didn’t fit neatly into a lender’s box were getting passed over. Hum is purpose-built to solve that.

The combination of data infrastructure and human judgment here is different from anything I’ve seen. Frankly, it’s the platform I wished had existed at every prior stop in my career — one that gives you access to data to help inform loans, so you can make difficult lending decisions rather than pass on the businesses that seem just beyond the reach of standard underwriting practices.

When that opportunity presents itself, you don’t walk away from it.

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Q: You’ve underwritten deals across ABL, consumer brands, and venture-backed companies. How does that breadth of experience shape how you work with borrowers at Hum?

JoBeth: I think it makes me a better listener. When I sit down with a company, I am not pattern-matching them to a single asset class or stage of growth, but rather hearing their needs and looking to see if I can satisfy them.It also opens the door to a more honest conversation about what our capital can realistically do for a business at that point in time. Sometimes that means telling a potential borrower hard truths they may not be ready to hear, but it tends to yield better and more beneficial long-term relationships. It builds trust faster than reading off a script and telling someone what they expect to hear.

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Q: What’s the most common misconception you hear from founders about debt?

JoBeth: That it’s a last resort. So many founders come to a lender only after a fundraise falls through or they’re running low on runway, and by then the options are narrower. Businesses that use debt most effectively are ones being proactive in their approach to capitalization, so using it as a complement to equity, not a substitute for it. Non-dilutive capital is a real asset on a cap table if sourced and deployed properly. 

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Q: Looking ahead, what are you most excited about in your role?

JoBeth: I am most excited about the deals we haven’t seen yet. Hum attracts a wide range of borrowers that fall outside the traditional lending grid, but have compelling fundamentals and real capital needs. Getting to apply everything I’ve learned across different credit disciplines to help these companies find the right solution at the right time is exactly the work I want to be doing.

→ Want to connect with JoBeth and the Hum team? Speak to Hum.