Raising Capital - Assessing the Options

Over the last several years, raising capital has become somewhat more difficult, yet not much so for viable ventures with a high quality and transparent business plan। The expectations of investors and lenders from Venture Capitalists (VC) to Angel Investors to Banks to SBA has not changed substantially, but they are all more selective. When money flowed in the go go 90's or the dot.com boom, there were plenty of success stories from business ideas that were funded from a scratch pad or napkin. Do plans get funded from an elevator pitch, let alone a summary today? Sure they do...when the principal(s) have great track records (such as built and profitably sold a few companies) and/or a clearly new technology or application is involved.

VC have hundreds of projects presented to them monthly। We have a our own proprietary data base of 750 or so VC firms, researched and sorted by the type of projects funded and what stage। There are some common themes with VC, including a preference for technology centered business plans in unique markets with very limited competition। During the dot.com boom, if you had competition but developed a better mouse trap, you may well be funded. That is very rarely true today.

So many entrepreneurs get excited when a VC firm expresses interest, but that is part of the process in their looking at so many ventures to fund a select few। As an example or how competition is viewed and a VC process may work, we gained interest from a dozen VC for a client with an online advertising application, a better mouse trap in a competitive space. They took an angel investor's money and developed the application (VC will almost always not do this) 2-3 years ago, and then trended revenues up about 2M last year although several competitors far surpassed that amount and their trend would surely continue based on many new clients. While a dozen VC expressed interest, with many follow up conference calls, the competitors in an ever evolving market place did not result in a VC commitment. The silver lining is they did except a Phase II raise for another angel.

There are perhaps over a thousand angel networks nationwide, some local or regional like a couple large groups in southern California, or many national, some where we have premium access। Angels think much like a VC, usually see less projects, invest in earlier stages, take greater risks and are less competitor wary। Angels do come in many forms from those that have invested in many projects and join many networks to be found to those that invest locally that you have to seek out. Angels are almost always the best equity option when compared to VC, particularly in their interest in a diversity of investments and the willingness to invest in early stage companies.

What is an early stage company? It is not a start up or a company that is launching without revenues, but a company that has revenues and has proven its business model yet has only scratched the surface of earned revenues and primarily needs operating and marketing dollars to get the next level, perhaps from low to mid six level income to seven figures। Start ups can attract angel capital as well, but expectations must be adjusted, almost always a phased investment tied to revenue benchmarks।

Of course VC and angels involved mean you are giving up an equity stake in your company। You do get the benefit of sage advice and you do typically not incur debt। On the flip side, in the long term, most entrepreneurs are better off with obtaining solid marketing and business development input within and separate of a custom high quality business plan and obtaining debt if qualified. SBA and SBAExpress are options we always suggest for consideration for early stage companies. When completing a business plan, and to a degree beforehand, we conduct due diligence like a VC, angel or SBA lender all rolled into one to assess the options and develop a plan that has varied capital options to the extent a business at its stake of development can qualify. Armed with a quality business plan, we can help raise the needed capital to expand businesses in a myriad of markets.

Communication is the Key to Success

In our business consulting practice, we work with a diversity of types of businesses, as well as the extremes from new entrepreneurs to seasoned C-level executives. I strongly believe in entrepreneurship as well as have faith that the combination of entrepreneurship and technology break troughs will lead to a new and better economy, and a better world. Therefore, we offer all parties a free scheduled phone consultation to determine i) we can help raise capital to accomplish their goals and make those dreams come true and ii) in developing a business plan to make that happen if a quality transparent business plan doesn't exist. .

In today’s world, communication has most often been reduced to snippets of information where most of Generation X or Generation Y have moved away from email and are stuck in 140 characters for texting. The world is also more random like atoms colliding, with the fact that 90% of people are too busy to answer a phone...myself included. Hence, like I have for a generation, if something is worth doing, it is worth scheduling via email, including calls. Since texting and brevity in our busy lives has become the norm, good communication habits are slowly disappearing. Therefore, I am not fond of texting to say the least and save texting for family and friends when calls and emails are not an option.

I am aware I need more patience, and as a born again Christian, I have become even more aware as being patient in one on one relationships is the right thing to do. Nonetheless, I believe in my big picture and the Lord has plans for me in his big picture (with clients and four renewable/green companies I have a stake, as well as the mysterious unknown). I also believe that time is as at least as precious as money, and giving back is more important than both. Hence, my patience in communicating politely, in detail or in a sugar coated manor versus directly when responding to incommunicative emails is and will always be limited and inpatient. I have written about time and time management, and still feel that ineffective, incomplete and poor communication wastes more time than anything, and wasting my time takes away from helping others, the ability to achieve and therefore give back.

Sometimes I get dozens of inquiries in a day or week regarding a business plan and/or funding, and the overwhelming majority ask a one sentence question that doesn't position me to be able to help. Many times this is due to a lack of experience, but most of the time it is about poor communication skills that are often a result from a life that has become texts and snippets. Very often, when faced with so many email inquiries that do not allow me to help but rather ask what is in effect a virtually worthless question to accomplish what may be a worthy goal, I tend to lose my patience and my answers are answered without enough appropriate thought. That said, I apologize to those I might offend in reading this blog as well.

Below are questions that I receive all the time:

1. Can you send me a sample business plan?

There are a few large companies that you can Google and then purchase a template if you want to do a business plan yourself. Unfortunately, I have never seen a template that wasn't extremely flawed. Logically, would a company with a revolutionary technology breakthrough that would serve many market segments require a business plan that would look like one for a coffee shop and fit in the same template? Of course it wouldn't! Hence, we only do custom business plan that each are different in order to meet different goals and therefore contain somewhat similar but different information. Plus, we can't send clients’ business plans as examples since that would breach confidentiality with our client.

2. How much will it cost?

Again, all our business plans are custom and clients are not well served when anyone uses a template. There are plenty of people that claim they are experts yet put every business venture within the same box. They complete the same research and spend the same amount of time on each plan and, therefore, can charge the same price. However, they do their customers a great disservice and take advantage of so many entrepreneurs.

3. How can you help me?

I actually do get this question regularly and on my busier days in combination with patience issues, my answer is “I don't know because I'm not a psychic.” There are many circumstances that determine if we can help anyone, i.e. what has been invested in the business, the type of business, the background and so many others. The answers will help determine if a client should seek SBA, bank, angel investor or even strategic or venture capital partners.

Many suggest they need a "business plan writer," as in a lone wolf or individual. That thought process diminishes the value of the business plan itself, which is critically important to launching businesses from providing an operational road map to obtaining capital. We have a deep team with team members that have varied experience in different business segments, plus we always have different team members complete the market analysis/business plan than the CPA or MBA that complete our very detailed forecasts. The Super Bowl just ended yesterday, and how many players mentioned in the post game about it being about the team. Yes, there is no I in team, and there are not many success stories that do not involve a team either.

I understand if this information is not for everyone as seasoned executives know that you need to establish a scope of work in order to have a deep professional team complete a highly transparent business plan to achieve their goals.