Maxwell Consulting

Financing for Startups

Investor Meetings

Once you have an Operating Plan and Investor Documents, you are ready to meet with investors and pitch your company.  I can assist you through this process.  I have made over 500 presentations to Angels and Venture Capitalists.  I know the terrain intimately.  I can't make your story any better than it actually is, but I can help you get it to the right people and tell it in the best possible way.  I am not going to act as a matchmaker, providing an introduction and then taking a percentage of your investment if the introduction bears fruit.  I view this limited service as being of very limited value.  Rather, I will take a contractor's position as your interim CFO and do the actual heavy lifting described below.

The first step is to identify investors who are likely to be interested in the story.  In the world of venture capital, this does not mean targeting a set of funds, it means identifying individual partners who have the domain expertise or industry experience to be able to understand our value proposition without requiring an extensive education in the field.  I can quickly do the research to find these people.

The next step is to find a person who is well known to the investor who can make a direct introduction, if I can't myself.  This is critical.  A plan sent in cold will never be read.  A plan sent in by a lawyer, accountant, or portfolio executive well known to the investor will get read.  This person is briefed on our story, and then asked to forward our Executive Summary to the targeted investor.  I will help you to find these trusted intermediaries.

The next step is to contact the investor directly and secure an initial meeting.  I will work to get us an appointment to make our pitch.

During any initial meeting, the management team, and especially the CEO, must do most of the talking.  My role is to support the financial section of the presentation, and provide an objective after-action review of how the meeting went and what we might do to improve our presentation and teamwork.

If we can interest investors sufficiently, they will undertake due diligence on us.  I will guide the Company through this tricky process. 

If we do well enough to receive one or more term sheets, I will work with you to negotiate the best deal the Company can get, and then work with our lawyers to paper the deal and reach a close.