More app downloads usually equates to more revenue for app companies. Some apps make money by selling apps, others rely on in-app ad advertising and still others offer a freemium model where consumers can get an app with ads for free or pay of a version sans ads. Regardless, in nearly every scenario, more downloads equates to more money for app developers.

But securing those app downloads often requires marketing dollars, dollars small app companies often don’t have a lot of.

Take health and fitness app company Red Rock Apps, which has 22 apps in Apple Inc.’s app store and seven apps available on Google Play. Although Red Rock Apps is profitable, founder Natalia Bahar says, the company needed more capital for marketing and to accelerate its growth through more downloads. Red Rock Apps makes its money through advertising or when consumers pay for an app upgrade for an add-free version.

“A loan would help us cover marketing expenses and speed up the process of company growth, and we knew we’d be able to pay it back through the increased revenue we’d be earning,” Bahar says.

Red Rock Apps wanted a non-dilutive source of capital—meaning not selling stake in the company and giving up equity—so a loan seemed to be the best route, Bahar says. Instead of going the traditional route of a bank loan, the company decided to use mobile app lender Aprenita Inc.

“We did speak with our bank, but the process of getting a traditional loan seemed long, tedious and really unpredictable,” Bahar says. “Also, as a digital company without meaningful hard assets, providing collateral was going to be a challenge.”

This is a typical challenge for app companies, says Mark Loranger co-founder at Aprenita. “Banks don’t understand the mobile app business,” Loranger says. “App companies don’t have collateral, it’s technology. You wind up having to put your house up for collateral.”

Aprenita, which only works with app companies, screens apps to see if they would be a good credit risk by evaluating the app’s number of downloads, revenue, monthly active users, daily active users, customer acquisition cost and growth over time, Loranger says.

Red Rock Apps, which has six million downloads across all of its apps, received a $40,000 loan from Aprenita. The loan carries a 20% annual percentage interest rate and a nine-month term, Bahar says. Typical Aprenita loans have between a 15% and 25% APR and the term is typically six to 18 months, Loranger says. While that may seem high compared to a typical car loan, Loranger says that there aren’t hidden fees in the loan, such as an origination fee. Aprenita also can approve and deploy a loan in days, while it could take weeks for financial institutions, he says.

It took two days from when Red Rock Apps submitted its application to approval, Bahar says. “Once we signed the electronic loan agreement and verified our bank account, we received payment the next day,” she says.

Red Rock used its loan money to generate more app downloads, and driving downloads accounts for 60% of the company’s expenses, Bahar says. “We do user acquisition mostly on Facebook where we run from 30 to 50 different campaigns at the same time,” she says.

Since receiving the loan, Red Rock apps’ revenue has grown 20% month over month each month since it received the loan, Bahar says. Red Rock apps is currently working on finalizing a second loan with Aprenita for $60,000.

Aprenita has between 30 and 40 clients, all of which are small app companies in such areas as health and fitness, lifestyle and gaming, Loranger says. Apps Aprenita works with are typically two or three years old and are either profitable or breaking even, he says. To date Aprenita, loans have typically ranged between $50,000 and $300,000.

Aprenita finds new customers through direct outreach, word of mouth and attending developer conferences, Loranger says.

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