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IPOs and Taking Your Company Public: Why Do Public Companies Fail?
There are a few things that one needs to consider when strategizing to take a business public on a major exchange: corporate structure, the speed and efficiency at which the IPO is facilitated, the market creation post public with corporate publicity strategies and investor relations, relationships to secure ongoing financing and finally strategic growth through acquisition.

The corporate structure is the foundation to the company which includes a strong ‘C’ level leadership boasting a pedigree of steeped experience and professional track record.

The board of directors must be seasoned and solid composed of industry specialists in the finance, advisory, legal and distribution sectors of the industry and finally the corporations strategic alliances must be in place and strong to pad the business model and help the company grow.

The speed at which the company achieves a trading symbol is important not only to the company but the seed capital investors who want a rapid turnaround on their investment. The audit, SEC filing, 15c11 and FINRA approval need to be orchestrated by experts to complete this task in a timely manner or this process can crush your company as opposed to enhancing it.

Now that you have your trading symbol you need to create the market. Don’t count on your market maker or broker dealer to do this as they are simply a vessel to complete trades and vouch for your company on the securities level. You need powerful investor relations (IR) and corporate publicity. You should also consider publicity strategies for your ‘C’ level executives to brand them as industry experts to add legitimacy and strength to your presence and market position.

Don’t forget PIPES and other post public securities monetization solutions. These companies can offer a lifeline if you’re company is seeking expansion or acquisition capital. Make sure you get references! The last thing you want is a PIPE firm that gives you a 60% LTV (or less) against your stock and then crucifies your company by dumping the stock, ouch!

If your company is in the correct phase of evolution, growing and ready for that next level, think: OTCBB. It’s fast and relatively affordable and if you’re corporate strategies are in place you could rake in some serious capital fast for your corporate expansion.

For Corporate Turnaround Services or Investor Relations and Publicity, call Princeton Corporate Solutions at 267-233-0183Take Your Company Public the easy way!

I’ve been involved with more mergers and acquisitions and IPOs than I can even count. I’ve been called many names when I’m getting involved with corporate turnaround consulting but the most common of these terms are: arrogant, cocky and hardheaded. I take these names as a feather in the cap and a notch on the belt because the worst thing that can happen is that a company or board of directors hires a wimp or pushover. Having swagger when walking into a negotiation session or presentation makes all the difference. Refuse to lose and have the contacts to back up your moves.

CEO’s and executives take note…it’s ok to be cocky of you can back it up with performance. My clients love me. The people on the receiving end of my firm’s negotiations hate me (until they hire me on their next project). My hate of losing exceeds my love of winning and I’ll never stop until the clients pull me off of the project or until the transaction is done. This mentality is a must for today’s executive and corporate consultant.

I’m not saying this to impress anyone or to get more business. I’m trying to express to new CEOs of public companies and pre public companies that you have to be fierce. When you step in a room everyone has to feel it. Your presence has to be loathed by some and the epitome of curiosity by others. Keep them guessing.

Demonstrate loyalty to your client and make competitors fear being on the receiving end of your attention and above all, be calculated with your moves and stealthy with your strategy. Don’t speak until you can level the room with what you have to say and understand the reality that for every action there will be a reaction and for every strategic move you make on your clients behalf, there will be countermeasures taken by the opposition.

It’s ok to stay up at night distracted by ideas that will press the throttle peddle on behalf of your client. It’s a forgivable sin to force-feed strategies and alliances to your client that will help them get a competitive edge over their competition. And above all remember this, at the end of the day in global commerce the winning side achieves more than domination but the ability to keep and create jobs and grow through acquisition which creates more jobs and profitability. Arrogance and the refusal to lose is the beginning of this entire process. Get it or get out!

For Corporate Turnaround Services or Investor Relations and Publicity, call Princeton Corporate Solutions at 267-233-0183Take Your Company Public the easy way!

Structure your company should spearhead your capital raising initiative. Make sure that your corporate layout is conducive to creating and retaining investor and venture capitalist attention. You should have a solid and elite executive team composed of the best of the best that your industry has to offer and if you can’t attract those in the upper echelon of your business genre, you need to take an active approach to branding them as experts using on and offline PR campaigns labeling yourselves as industry experts who are innovating industry changing solutions. Create a stir, be controversial (but not offensive) and be ready to back up your stir with empirical evidence of your knowledge and success. You should have an advisory board and board of directors composed of industry specialists. Each individual should represent a forte that makes investors start to salivate when they are reading the bio section of your business plan. They should be able to contribute with contract negotiation, strong alliance introduction capabilities and more. When choosing professionals to fill the void of adviser and director positions you should think in terms of corporate ‘growth’ and ’stabilization’.

Next you want to make sure that your entity is prepared to receive debt and/or equity capital. You’ll need a solid business plan, don’t write it yourself, you’ll only hinder your ability to raise capital. Call a professional to write your strategic business plan. Next you’ll need a way to distribute equity or debt shares, a Private Placement Memorandum is the most common mechanism for helping companies raise capital quickly and easily while staying within the regulation guidelines of the SEC. Your PPM must be written by a professional to deliver the ultimate protection for your company while simultaneously spelling out the technical intricacies of your business to the investor.

Now that your company is structured properly, you have a business plan and a PPM, you are ready to start raising capital. Your first call should be to a corporate turnaround consultant with an arsenal of global funding contacts composed of all the necessary contacts such as: venture capital firms, private equity firms, angel investors, private investors, accredited investors, structured finance firms and so on. This turnaround consultant, if they are part of an established firm (always use a small boutique firm if you can find one, they are much more affective and one on one than the larger firms and tend to get the job done quicker without the headaches) they will have a service call and ‘Investor Finder’ service. They will reach into their gargantuan bag of contacts and give you so many funding options your head will spin, thus, making your fund raising efforts fast and painless.

Now that you achieved your first round of fund raising it’s time to get serious. Yes! It’s time to take your company public. Stay away from Pink Sheets and Reverse Mergers, you’ll only regret it. If you are a smaller business or a startup, your best bet is the OTCBB. Go back to your turnaround consultant and have them start putting you through the sec audit, sec registration, FINRA registration and Market Maker joint venture and S1 filing. They should be able to handle the entire ‘going public’ process for you and in 4 to 7 months, you’re public and trading.

Be sure to take advantage of the multitude of strategies to capitalize off of your securities. Remember there are many ways to capitalize off of your shares, selling shares through your market maker, continuously engaging in heavy PR to stabilize and enhance your stock price and another way that many entrepreneurs don’t consider as an option when raising capital, the almighty hedge lender will can lend your company money against your collateralized securities. Yes! Use your stock as security for financing. After you pay off the loan, line of credit or lease you get those shares back (be sure that your lawyer audits your contract with the lender to keep away from any convertible stock clauses). So now you are raising capital by selling stock as well as the ‘on demand’ loan or LOC concept of security backed lending.

Congratulations! You’ve just completed ‘Real’ corporate finance 101! Now get out there, put your company together and start raising the capital you need.

For Corporate Consulting or Investor Finder Services, call Princeton Corporate Solutions at 267-233-0183Take Your Company Public the easy way!

Why Are You Taking Your Company Public? Evolve Or Die! As the owner of a corporate consulting firm that takes companies public and steps into public entities with a turnaround team to fix dying companies, there are two realities of corporate strategies that ring true in any and all industries when it comes to creating successful companies and those realities are: few things work and nothing works for long. Evolve or die, the decision is yours. What works today didn’t work ten years ago and won’t work ten years from now.

Promotional strategies, inter industry alliances, legal loopholes and board member’s bartering chips are forever spinning and mutating and like Zen seem to change shape just as the issues that make a strategies template seem to be defined and duplicatable.

Constantly update your publicity technologies. Always get the opinion of different peer groups who represent polar opposites in the market place before you roll out a new product or service. Before you make a decision have a backup plan and a backup plan to that plan. Have your CFO’s work audited by outside sources. Run credit checks on executives before they are promoted and find out if they are trying to live above their means, if so, they have the ‘grass is greener’ disease and will never be satisfied and will always be looking for a better deal. Employees like this can’t be trusted to help carry a company.

If you are a business owner, your job should be finding someone more qualified than you to run and grow your company. Always have multiple streams of revenue. If you are in the service industry, diversify by offering some products. If you are in the product industry (retail type) partner with some service oriented companies to earn commissions off of their efforts and your customer base.

Always be on a lookout for strategic partners and never be afraid to network. Keep updating your business plan. When raising capital stay out of debt and offer equity instead and when you offer equity in return for investment, pick inter industry alliances to raise capital from. Use a publicist and publicize everything! If you can’t afford a publicist put out press releases keeping your industry and potential clients informed of what you’re doing.

The above is just a little advice that I give to each client before initiating the structuring process of a Pre IPO. These realities will hold true today, next year and as long as commerce exists.

For Corporate Turnaround Services or Investor Relations and Publicity, call Princeton Corporate Solutions at 267-233-0183Take Your Company Public the easy way!

There is a lot of confusion about stock and securities backed, non-recourse lending. Here is a case study for three different scenarios of what can be done for ultimate capitalization if one owns stock and wants to monetize without selling their shares.

Client A is in the gaming business based in the Southeast and had problems getting conventional financing to fund their growth. The project was a bid and fulfillment of contract to place gaming machines in new locations recently approved for gaming. The need was $1.2 million and while the company itself could not fund its growth, the owner’s personal portfolio of mostly blue chip stocks got a loan to value of 85% and a rate of 0.75% with a cap at 1.75% for 5 yrs. He has the option to renew for 2 additional 5 year periods.

Client B has substantial real estate holdings both residential and commercial. One of his larger commercial mortgages was getting ready to reset with a large balloon payment due. Not having the money and not being able to refinance with his bank he came to us. The need was $1.4 million and in this case the portfolio consisted of only one stock. That stock was a large cap stock nearly a ‘blue chip’ company that got a loan to value of 82% and a rate of 1.05% with a cap of 2.05% over a period of 3 yrs. He has the option of renewing for 2 additional 3 year periods.

Client C has a company that is ready to go public. They are already on board with an investment bank and their IPO has already been priced and is ready for sale to the underwriting syndicate prior to its listing and trading on the NASDAQ stock exchange. The company needed a bridge loan as well additional funding to pay the substantial investment banking and stock exchange fees to complete their listing. The need was $1.5 million and we used the Treasury stock of the Company itself that was going to be issued to do a loan at 78% loan to value at a rate of 1.00% and a cap of 2.00% over a period of 3 years. They have the option of renewing for 2 additional 3-year periods.

Raising fast capital for any reason, regardless of credit is easy if you know how!

Stock Loans or Non Recourse Stock Lending, call Princeton Corporate Solutions at 267-233-0183No Credit Check Stock Loans the easy way!