FAQ

Most importantly, they work. In a world in which fewer than 1 in 250 business plans ever raise venture capital, we are happy to report that about half of our plans have raised capital, and a good portion of the rest resulted in an acquisition or currently have commitments for investment from prior round investors. Each plan is handcrafted to reflect the client’s specific circumstances, yet share attributes that investors find appealing.

Balance sheets that balance. Cash flows, income statements, and balance sheets that tie together (you’d be surprised by how many consultants who don’t get the basics right). Fully assumption-driven, so that you can do what-if analyses. Depending on your needs, we can include a lot of very sophisticated features – learn more about our financial projections here.

Every situation is unique. However, some fairly common steps include the following:

• Initial discussion to understand your basic needs.
• Review your existing materials (draft business plans, financials, market research, competitor research, etc.).
• Follow-up discussion to clarify details and agree upon the scope and fees for the project.
• Several in-depth discussions to better understand the details, develop strategies, and agree on all major elements of the business plan and financial model.
• Conduct additional research, as needed.
• Draft an Investor Presentation and review it with you to ensure that all parties agree on the high-level vision.
• Draft the Executive Summary and review it with you to ensure that we all agree on the next level of detail.
• Prepare a draft outline of the business plan for your review.
• Begin filling in the details on the draft. Obtain and incorporate your feedback.
• Incorporate your revenue and expense models into the financial model, and explain how it works so that you can take “ownership” of the financials.
• Finalize all deliverables.
• Coach you on the best way to deliver the investor presentation and on how to address questions.
• Provide ongoing support, including making minor updates to the deliverables at no additional charge.

Depending on how we structure the project, you should expect to spend anywhere from 10-30 hours on the process over the course of a typical engagement.

For a typical engagement, consisting of a business plan, financial forecast, and investor presentation, the typical time to completion is 6-8 weeks, as illustrated below. The actual time can be influenced by the quality of your existing materials, the level of your participation, the complexity of your market and business model, and our current workload.

Yes, but we may need to charge a “rush” fee. We typically work on multiple projects at any point in time, and rush projects can strain our schedules or inconvenience other clients.

Only if you’re always right. One of our jobs is to help you avoid mistakes. We’ll challenge your ideas and assumptions so that you’ll be ready for the tough questions when you meet with investors.