define your priorities.
"Debt vs. Equity?" can't be answered in a vacuum or with a textbook comparison. The decision is a function of priorities and availability.
"Debt" & "Equity" are two broad categories of "other people's money" (OPM). They sit on more of a spectrum than in separately defined buckets and are not mutually exclusive. To make thoughtful financing decisions, companies should:
Define priorities - why are you raising money? what is important to you? There is a cost of doing business when you take OPM - financial and operational in terms of how the company is expected to conduct itself. They vary meaningfully across the options and differ by company / situation. Defining what you set out to achieve and what is important to you gives you a benchmark to evaluate the range of costs and what you will receive in exchange.
Understand the menu and what options are available to you. Depending on the use case, specific options make more sense than others. Sometimes equity isn't available to you. Sometimes debt isn't. Sometimes neither is. Sometimes they are, but the terms are not agreeable and it makes more sense to revisit in the future. To make informed financing decisions, companies should understand what is on the menu, what is currently available to them and the range of associated costs / expectations.
The Uncommon Borrower starts their financing decision by 1) defining their priorities, 2) laying out the range of available options and associated costs / expectations, and 3) identifying the solution (if any) that best aligns with what is important to them and what they set out to achieve.