This paper investigates the financial characteristics of new small firms. The analysis develops a representative, small-firm financial profile, and evaluates the extent to which the proportionate use of different instruments and sources is correlated with industry-level and firm-specific characteristics. Multivariate methods are then used to examine relationships between financial structure, R&D-intensity and innovation.Our results suggest that relationships between knowledge-intensity and capital structure are bidirectional. After controlling for a range of industry-and firm-level covariates, firms that devote a higher percentage of their investment expenditure to R&D also exhibit less debt-intensive structures. Conversely, debt-intensive structures also act to constrain investments in R&D. These relationships, however, depend upon the type of debt in the asset mix. It is the share of long-term debt to total assets that is negatively related to investments in knowledge.