Investors look at xEBITDA. This feels in-line with businesses of that scale. In terms of raise, everything can be negotiated but will depend on risk / return profile, market multiples in space and searcher fit.

Would you be doing this as an SBA deal? If so, a pretty common approach would be preferred equity, maybe something like a 10%-12%+ rate and it's participating. There would be an agreed upon distribution waterfall for how the pref return and return of capital distributions are split. Then, investor equity would have a "step up," which is a multiple applied to their % contribution to the total project cost to get to their total equity ownership in the company. Typical step ups are around 2x-2.5x, though above that isn't unheard of. E.g., in your example, if total project cost is $4M after fees and expenses, investors contribute $500k (12.5%), and step up is 2x, then they'd have 25% equity and you'd have 75%. Usually investors in self-funded searcher deals are targeting 30-35% +/- IRR under conservative base case scenarios. So you can tweak the parameters to get to that range. There will also be negotiated investor rights and certain things you can and can't do without their approval. Experienced lawyer who has negotiated these before for self-funded searchers will be critical. Of course, everything is negotiable, but if you're talking with experienced investors in the space and proposing something off-market, that will be a harder sell.