How To Build Strong Strategic Business Partnerships and Take Your Company Public
Do You Need Capital For Your Company? Build Strong Strategic Partnerships! In this economy, companies who survive have more than just a strong business model; they have aligned themselves with strategic partners in a joint effort to create a win/win relationship where each contributes to a pool of contacts, promotional initiatives and industrial knowledge.
Strategic alliances are the number one way to strengthen your company if you are trying to raise capital from venture capital firms, angel investors, hedge fund lenders, angel investors or if you are trying to take your company public. Empirical evidence companies who demonstrate a track record of unified success strengthens the package and puts you on the radar as an invest-able entity and you’ll start to get attention from the big players as you watch the value of your company soar.
The big question is, “Where do you find these partners and who can help you speed up the search?” You should start by having an executive meeting and put all your industry contacts together and invite these contacts to a networking ‘meet and greet’. Make it nice. Have a caterer, have giveaways etc. After you’ve done this the next step is to talk to your accountant, attorney, members of professional organizations in which you are a member, your banker, your billing service (if you outsource your invoicing), your financial adviser and/or consultant and any other professional that you’ve used in the past who has access to corporations in your industry or in a complimenting industry and can introduce you to new partners. This is exactly how ‘in demand’ executives and powerful CEO’s, CFO’s and consultants do it.
I have personally built a database of 10,000′s of contacts from using these methods, in fact I’ve never gone into a consulting situation where I couldn’t introduce my client to 1,000+ new strategic partners and I just cherry pick to find the best partners for my client. Your contact portfolio is the most powerful thing you’ll have in business. Contacts are your bartering chip when you’re in a crunch or when your board of directors is all looking at you waiting for a miracle. I have made it a point to create contacts in every industry no matter how polar opposite the industries may seem because it has allowed me to step into any situation with companies of any size and immediately start putting the pieces together and building an infrastructure based off of the powerful knowledge of dozens of industry experts.
Take the initiative and find a consultant who can help you launch your company into a whole new realm with the power and knowledge and expertise of a contact base built to induce growth and stability.
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taking a company public
Regulation D – Private Placement Memorandums and OTCBB: The Easy ‘Go Public’ Process
Are you a business owner raising capital with a Regulation D Rule exemption (504, 505 or 506) also referred to as a Private Placement Memorandum, PPM or Offering Memorandum? If you are using this mechanism to raise capital then you’ll, no doubt, have to have a solid comprehension of the most distinct and important part of the Private Placement Memorandum referred to as the ‘Offering Circular’.
When your consultant or attorney is asking you for details on everything from business location to management, from dividends to risk details, you need to make sure that this information is complete and accurate. You’ll need to audit the documents after they are completed. A solid Offering Circular has kept countless companies from being sued by investors that didn’t get the investment return they were anticipating.
While the business plan is meant to grab the initial attention of the investor or funding source, the Offering Memorandum is meant to spell out the down and dirty details of the venture so that you are protected from lawsuits down the road, while simultaneously exposing the various ins and outs of your venture to give a ‘reality check’ to the investor before they hand over the cash.
The offering circular needs to be powerful yet very compact without the redundancies of using space to say the same things over and over again to pull the investors attention from the negative to the potential profit margins or management’s impressive pedigree. With all this said, yes it’s true the offering circular is one of the parts of a PPM spells out the technical aspects of the enterprise with a focus on inherent risk of investing but this can be done in a balanced way to also demonstrate the positive aspects of your venture by giving solid descriptions of your management team and, in place, distribution centers and contracts in place ready for capitalization.
When authoring the offering circular demonstrate the risks with a well balanced demonstration of the system in place to overcome these risks and dominate your market niche.
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taking a company public
Over The Counter Bulletin Board – How To Go Public
Take Your Company Public: Beware of Scams! Many entrepreneurs dream of taking their company public and expanding their venture into an international enterprise that begins to hemorrhage investment capital and profits from the get-go but then reality sets in as one begins to navigate the dingy, shark infested waters of the ‘go public’ market place.
There are consultants and boiler room penny stock misfits just waiting for you to stumble onto their site and in only a few minutes on the phone you’re reeled in and signing contracts and making wire transfers and equity disbursements and at the end of the grueling 3 to 6 month process, you’re broke, your company is in shambles and you just stand their staring off into space feeling like the boogie-man just slapped you around. Welcome to an industry where the weak are preyed upon like wolves on an injured lamb tangled in a fence.
If you are serious about going public there are some structures to stay away from because 99.9% of the time they fail. Pink Sheets and Reverse Mergers into a public shell are two formations to be very weary of. Pink Sheets are almost a completely unregulated trading platform and known by any savvy investor as the ‘red light district’ of the public trading industry. Pump ‘em and dump ‘em is the name of the game with Pink Sheets. Stock Price manipulation is as common with pink sheets as gross stench is to 5 day old road kill on a desert highway. If you are going to get involved with Pink Sheets find an attorney or consultant that can guide you around the scam artists, it’s difficult to make in on the Pinks but I have heard of a few companies making it.
The next cesspool in the trading industry is ultra popular (for newbie’s) and the number one ‘big mistake’ made by countless ‘go public’ rookies, the reverse merger into a public shell ouch! It even hurts to say it. I get calls on a daily basis from business owners who thought they were getting droppings of manna from heaven when a consultant suggested that they save $100,000′s and months of work by simply buying a public shell and merging their entity with it and abracadabra you’re big time and public and making millions. Sadly the reality is that this poor sap just spent $200k on an entity with liens and 15% equity distributed to a group of investors who pumped up the stock and dumped it before the ink on the contracts was dry. Now his dreams are shattered, he’s broke; his company will get stripped down and sold off in pieces like an unlocked car in the ghetto.
It’s sad when I see the same scams perpetrated on the uninformed over and over again. If you are trying to raise capital, find a consultant, objective broker dealer or attorney who will listen to your needs and before doing anything will give you the good and bad news about the various options. Taking your company public can be one of the most rewarding experiences of your career. You can purchase other companies with stock. You can use stock as collateral for quick loans to support growth. You can reward employees with shares in the company for meeting certain objectives. Go public, fulfill your dreams just use caution as you proceed.
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taking a company public
