Solar City's solar bonds caught my eye because the last time I considered this kind of financing was seeing the large bond issues by AMD to build a fabrication plant. Previously bonds seemed like a mostly irrelevant financial instrument for startups due to typical financials, but a situation like Solar City makes an opening where growth results in the purchase of hard assets that can back the principal value of the debt and a profit that can offer a predictable return, something dead money is very interested in.

I asked myself, "Are we going to see a wave of startups figuring out how to phrase their late-stage capital raising in terms of other old-school financial instruments?" What are some other typical Wall Street machinations startup world might not know as well?

In the case of huge capital requirements, stating ones growth plan as a bond seems quite an enabler for previously untouchable product concepts that would never make it out of early stage to access the late-stage private equity that's the only usual alternative for raising huge sums. Is this even the right way to look at the situation with Solar City? What other companies are doing or have tried to do something like this?