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Going public, the be all and end all to economic relief for the right companies. If you have a solid business process, profits, a solid infrastructure and scalable business model then yes, going public may be just what you need to get to the next level. Make sure your IR is set up and budget long term for this solution and keep your C level executives on TV and radio and other mass publicity venues that will have your stock price above the name of the company, below the executives name.

But if you are going public because you’re broke and a startup, the combination of the two is a stew that guarantees failure. Investors will poke holes in your business model, corporate infrastructure and board of director pedigrees faster than you can say ‘pump and dump’ and when they do, know this, it will be public and it will be messy.

When going public you need to make sure that your executives are the most elite of the elite and that each board member is serving a specific purpose and contributes in specialty niche as well as offering a recognizable name, whether the name be their name or the company that they represent.

Your executive lineup needs to read like the who’s who of the industry. Your strategic alliances need to look like an ocean of executive samurai lined up to trample any company that could represent even a modest competitive notion.

Your attorneys need to instill fear in defamers and your compliance auditors need to be squeaky clean with a reputation for never bending to the ease of shortcuts. These things, when combined with each other will create massive investor confidence with rapid volume trading growth and an overall business model that will thrive in the public marketplace.

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Taking Your Company Public? Post Public Investor Relations Can Make Or Break Your Company Going public is an amazing undertaking with the light anticipated at the end of the tunnel is increased market share, financial stability and of course the almighty strategy of growth through acquisition. The problem is for most companies that light at the end of the tunnel isn’t anything even remotely close to the above; instead it’s a train that will crush you under it’s weight as it’s steaming full speed ahead. That train is a personification of the ‘lack’ of solid investor relations strategies in your post public existence.

Investor relations is the process of working with broker dealers, market makers, stock alert services, press release distribution, fielding calls from the media, potential investors and others interested in your company as well as general publicity to get your executive, company name and trading symbol on as many TV screens, radio waves, social media platforms and email boxes as possible.

The above is the traditional comprehension of a ‘newbie’ public CEO. What most new public CEOs lack the understanding of the post public IR concept so they don’t know what questions to ask the IR firm and have no knowledge to compare services so they sign a crap deal, the stock price doesn’t open, then plummets and everyone begins pointing the finger and on and on with the blame game.

Here is a part of investor relations that most companies never consider. A solid IR firm will have a strong network of investors, broker dealers, private equity funds etc. to create liquidation options for pre IPO investors in a way that will not damage the stock price, to the contrary, the share price will typically go up.

You need to have your consultant set up a safeguard so that when people buy and sell your shares it’s done in a way that doesn’t cause panic but induces investor confidence. When you are interviewing Investor Relations firms a few questions to ask is: how to they create the market, what safety nets and precautionary measures do they put in place to protect the integrity of your newly public company stock and how vast is their ‘speed dial’ investor network (investors they have rapport with so that they can offer buy and hold stock positioning which will minimize your risk when seed investors start cashing in their shares).

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

The ‘Spoke Wheel’ Approach To Taking Your Company Public.

A public corporation, just as a private company is composed of several contributing factors that dictate the outcome of its success. If you visualize your corporate entity as the ‘hub’ of the wheel and each spoke as a ‘contributing asset’ to the company you’ll find that the more spokes in the wheel, the more weight the wheel can carry as its strength rests on scores of unified connections working together, each with one simultaneous point of interest, the hub.

These hub connections can be anything that contributes to the overall success and perpetual, yet controlled, growth strategy of the company such as: a dozen strategic partnerships that act as growing distribution channels for your product or service, finance alliances that take care of your growth capital needs, multiple legal professionals that you can tap into for advise and corporate strategies, dozens of companies within your industry that focus on a different element of the industry but cooperate as a referral source for new business and on and on.

Your goal, in creating a solid, strategically aligned pre public and post public corporation is to keep building spokes and bringing on partners and executives that can instantly contribute to adding more strategic alliances and growth enhancers to your ever evolving and emerging corporate wheel.

If you are a public company, partnerships that you should have heavily represented in your model should be securities attorneys, market makers and broker dealers, several publicists with different areas of media focus, viral publicists, investor relations facilitators and service providers etc. Don’t forget the political contacts and padding contacts. By ‘padding’ I mean contacts that may serve no active role other than having some big names affiliated with your company that can gain attention within and outside your specific industry genre.

Go Public With Your Company, call Princeton Corporate Solutions at 267-233-0183Take Your Company Public the easy way!

Business Owners: Build A Corporate Structure That Investors Love! Ok, you’ve decided to go after investment capital but you’re not sure where to start. Here are the basics that you should pay close attention to before putting your company in front of investors.

First and foremost you need to perform an industry analysis that answers the questions pertaining to where you are in the industry and who are your competitors. It doesn’t matter what product or service you offer. You could be selling underwater sock fitting kits and there is a competitor and industry leader somewhere in the world. Don’t be so naive in thinking that there is no competition or that you are at the pinnacle of your industry. Show your audience that you’ve done your research and that you’ve identified the players in your market.

Next get your executive team together and it better be the who’s who in your industry. If you can’t attract the upper echelon of your industry genre then you need to do some serious PR on behalf of your individual executive team to show the public what they are made of. Brand them as the up and coming powerhouse executives in the industry. Publish their articles and knowledge on industry blogs and article submission sites. When a funding source initiates general due diligence you need to shine like a lighthouse in the fog. Each and every executive team member needs to have an image that screams power, success and investor security.

The next thing you need to do is take a serious look at your board of directors. Who is on your board, what is their compensation and is there someone that is a better fit for formulating strategies and alliances than those who are currently populating your director staff.

One of the main reasons that investors turn down companies for funding is because they lack the backup of industry players in connection to strategic alliances. You need to identify and contractually reach out to companies that will enhance your overall business strategy. Your minimum goal should be 10 solid, aged companies that have already branded their names in the marketplace and are willing to add you to their mix of advertising and ongoing strategy and they will expect the same from you. Show investors that it’s not just you treading water in the industrial whirlpool and that you’ve built a life preserver of alliances.

Now you are ready to write a business plan and private placement memorandum that takes all the essential elements above and puts them in two well authored and to the point documents that will make an interesting and informative read for investors who have a track record of investment in your particular industry. If you’ve written your own business plan, toss it. If investors are going to take you seriously you need a professionally written business plan that touches on all the triggers that investors are currently looking for.

Next, it’s best to use the Regulation D, Private Placement Memorandum as the vehicle for staying within SEC guidelines for raising capital and you should use a Direct Public Offering as the process for raising the actual capital. Reaching out to friends, family, industrial counterparts and alliances should be the first place you go for funding. If you are lucky the consultant you hire to assist you with the above processes will have a solid database of investors to assist you in your initial, first round raise via DPO.

Last but not least you should consider, even though it’s not a mandatory requirement for a PPM or DPO, getting an independent audit done on your company to demonstrate an objective analysis of your financial reality so that investors can find their comfort level quicker without a prolonged comments stage.

There you have it. These are the basics to what it takes to achieve equity investment in this current market. Get out there and raise some money!

Want To Go Public With Your Company, 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!

What Is the Process Of Taking A Company Public? Here Are The Answers!

Going public can make or break a company. As long as you are prepared it can be the biggest blessing ever bestowed on your company. Understanding the process can help you decide if this is a direction you’d like to take. Here is the process:

First you’ll need corporate structuring to create a business model that is conducive to raising capital and increasing investor confidence so you’ll need to take a long hard look at your ‘C’ level executives and their educational and professional pedigree and track record, your board of directors capabilities and abilities to contribute with capital connections and strategic alliances.

Second you’ll need to write a business plan that take into consideration a strong business model, financial projections that will stand up to the scrutiny of your SEC auditor and investors who have their investments audited by legal counsel and accountants while simultaneously painting a picture of a solid and viable, and yes, recession proof business model.

Third you will need a PPM to break your company up into shares to distribute to seed capital investors and stay within the SEC Regulation D requirements.

Fourth you’re ready to file your S1 and get into the comments stage. Be prepared to answer questions and be patient. The SE needs to understand your business enough to approve it. Some of their comments are pretty strange but it is what it is. Your best bet is to have a good securities attorney file for you.

Fifth you need your third party audit. This can be a large financial undertaking if your books are a mess and a good auditor can be in and out in around a month.

Sixth after the SEC approval you’ll have your market maker file your 15c211 with FINRA to get your approval and stock symbol.

Lastly, you’ll need a strong post public investor relations strategy to induce investment and calm down those who want to sell their stock. A good IR strategy will also bring into account massive amounts of traditional and viral publicity.

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

Think back to just a few short years ago, banks were on a lending spree, corporate lines of credit were being issued in record volume and companies were able to raise equity and debt capital with reasonable ease; then came the banking crash which unfortunately brought on an entirely new group of scams preyed on the innocent and naive small business owner which damaged the economy that much more.

Scams such as platform based funding, banking instrument collateralized lending, shelf corporation scams and on and on. Fortunately there is a light at the end of the tunnel thanks to some of the venture capital and private equity industry’s talented global finance executives who have decided enough is enough.

Now entrepreneurs are seeing professional collective funding efforts put forth by these seasoned finance gurus in the form of online membership databases which possess some of the best kept secrets in the global funding markets. Many of these databases include finance companies and methods that have never been available to the public and were used for decades by VC professionals who were able to pull off funding miracles on behalf of clients and in return made hefty commissions.

Now, with these unique contacts being placed in database form they are now available to everyone and anyone who needs capital. Imaging going to one website, joining for a modest fee and getting access to thousands upon thousands of private investors, angel investors, venture capital firms, hard money lenders, private equity firms, aggressive hedge fund lenders, Asian and European finance, factoring and other wonderful and easily comprehensive options to acquire capital.

A few of these membership databases have even taken the next step to give the business owners the elements to promote their business in a way that will help them pass due diligence with ease. Some venture capital executives got so fed up with having a client with a great business model, solid infrastructure, exceptional board of directors and even money in the bank but the deal would die when the company went into the due diligence and offer phase that they actually paid programmers to design a download-able application that offers the entrepreneur easy yet extremely powerful publicity with the strength of an actual high end PR firm all at the click of a button, it’s truly amazing.

The economy may not be what it used to be but it has forced the evolution of certain aspects of the financial industry to be more small business and entrepreneur friendly. There is massive funding out there for your company if you take the time to look.

Do You Need Financing For Your Business? Do You Need Angel Investors, Private Investors or Venture Capital, then visit Angel Funding Project’s site and find the best Business Funding Sources In The Industry.

We get calls all day, every day from companies that talk about ‘wanting’ real corporate publicity that will transform their company but few have the stomach for what it really takes and even fewer have the financial dedication it takes to obliterate their competition and take their rightful place at the top of the food chain.

Of course it’s important to cater to the traditional media (TV, radio, newspaper, industry journals, etc) but the genre of publicity that wins every time is viral publicity consisting of video, social and news bookmarks, article submissions, press release submissions and photo/logo sharing sites. The reality is online publicity is where you’re going to completely annihilate your competitors and claim your rightful position.

When you take into consideration the ultra powerful medium and stealth of viral publicity, all other promotional genres cower in comparison. Online your pre public or post public company will claim instant viewers and a cult-like following that TV and radio can’t even remotely compare. Billions of searches take place every day and it is the viral publicists job to do what SEO and traditional publicists can’t do and that is get solid search engine ranking while simultaneously bringing in powerful results that are targeted and strategically placed.

Forget pay per click, it’s a waste of your time. crush everything in your path with viral publicity that claims power positions on the natural search results on all search engines. You must have a solid combination of mediums at use to take control of targeted keywords and industry genres.

So the next time you tell your self-proclaimed publicist or seo agent that you need publicity that will claim your position and deliver virtually instantaneous results for your company, you’ll understand why there is silence on the other end of the line…because they have no clue as to what it takes to get serious results that will rip and shred everything in your path. The powerful combination of viral publicity and massive exposure will force-feed your concept to the willing masses who are pleading with a company in your industry to step up and spoon-feed the very info that your company is offering.

Stop wasting time and money with so called ‘solutions’ that don’t work. You need a publicist, investor relations specialist and SEO demigod that will take you by the hand and pave a way for your company to succeed.

For Corporate Consulting or Investor Relations Solutions, call Princeton Corporate Solutions at 267-233-0183Corporate Publicity That Works the easy way!

So many companies dream of going public both as a growth and exit strategy but unfortunately few succeed with this process. The third party audit, sponsoring of the S1 and 211 by a market maker and SEC comments stage is just one of the obstacles involved with taking a company public. The attempt at going public and actually achieving a symbol are two entirely different things and if you are lucky enough to achieve a symbol there’s a completely separate area of expertise needed to keep your stock trading and to preserve a company’s longevity in the marketplace.

Here are some things you need to keep in mind when gearing up to take your company public. Forget everything that you’ve read and heard and pay attention to what you’re about to read because this is the straight forward, objective reality of the process. First, do not hire an attorney to take you public as they will take you on a long drawn out process to get as many billable hours as possible, instead, hire a consulting firm whose sole business model is to take companies public and take advantage of the relationships that they have with attorneys. This is the first rule: hire a consulting firm that offers a complete A to Z turn-key solution for taking a company through the process of going public, achieving a symbol and preserving the trade with a solid, ongoing post public investor relations strategy.

Next, when you’ve decided on a consulting firm evaluate their team, don’t ask for references to call to research their track record, better yet, ask for symbols of previous clients and links to the Edgar database to check out current deals in the comments stage. The proof is in the empirical track record, not potentially fraudulent phone references that are easily engineered and BS.

Now look at their team. Make sure that the consulting group has a solid legal team, market makers, investor relations team, auditing group and someone well versed in the comments stage response as this can be one of the major hang-ups in achieving your symbol in a timely manner. Also, most important, they absolutely MUST have a solid group of investors to fund the process for equity and to sell their shares into the marketplace post public to create a market for your stock as well as a network of market makers familiar with your deal to piggyback off of the sponsoring market maker’s 211.

About one month away from symbol achievement you’ll want to meet with your consultants to get a solid IR strategy together for a big offering dbut. You will want to set up a strategy for 30 day IR intensives every other month with general corporate publicity strategies in between. I suggest changing your IR firm each quarter to keep it fresh and open up your trade to a new network of investors.

One special note to consider is that when you are raising your initial round of capital from seed investors, the fastest way to do this is to have a fist full of contracts and purchase orders in hand to strengthen your position and publicize this reality with an arsenal of press releases. Its 100 times easier to raise capital if you are showing seed investors a handful of ‘soon to be’ cash than to solicit them empty handed.

Obviously there are a multitude of other issues that you need to take into consideration when going public so find a consulting firm that can help you make it happen. Don’t try to venture out into these waters on your own as you’ll be diving into shark infested waters and you’ll almost certainly fail.

For Corporate Consulting or Invest Seed Capital In Pre-IPO Companies, call Princeton Corporate Solutions at 267-233-0183Take Your Company Public the easy way!

Why Are You Writing A Private Placement Memorandum (PPM) To Raise Capital? I feel like I have to put this out there as a corporate strategies consultant with a firm that is completely submerged in the industry of authoring business plans, private placement memorandums (regulation d rule 504, 505 and 506), facilitating direct public offerings to our database of investors and taking companies public on the OTCBB.

When I get calls about private placement memorandums it is typically one of two scenarios: 1. They want to raise capital and they are shopping around for the cheapest PPM author they can find. 2. They have made the mistake of using the cheapest PPM author they could find and now they can’t find an investor that will fund their 70 page stack of toilet paper.

It never ceases to amaze me when companies are trying to convince investors that they are ready for that next step in their corporate evolution, yet they are being penny wise and dollar foolish with the most technical document their company has ever had done. And why do people put the cart before the horse? I mean, why do people write the private placement memo before they know who their audience is? As a rule of thumb you should write for your audience.

A ppm that is being written for venture capital firms will demonstrate and cater to more of an equity control and technical audience whereas a ppm that is being written for angel investors, private investors and small private equity firms who want to be in and out of a transaction will typically want to buy low and sell high and will typically want to invest in companies that are going public in as short of a time as possible.

The investors in pre public companies and other ‘angel’ type investors have a minimal bankroll of $1m or less (usually) so they have to be in and out of a transaction fast, thus the need for a ‘selling shareholder offering’. This is a mandatory prerequisite for a company that wants to raise capital from angels and go public. With a selling shareholder offering you are setting up a scenario that ever investor dreams of.

You are giving them the ability to buy deeply discounted stock and 3 or 4 months later, when the company goes public, they can sell their stock into the market at an offering price that is typically 4 or 5 times what they originally purchased the shares at and the company is happy because the investor created a bridge for the company to go public and then created a public float.

Now, after reading this, you will see why writing a PPM before you know who your audience is and before you’ve contracted with a consulting firm is a critical mistake. Find a consulting firm that is well rounded as a capital raising facilitator and have them help you set a goal as an end result and then build your strategy from there.

For Corporate Consulting or Invest Seed Capital In Pre-IPO Companies, call Princeton Corporate Solutions at 267-233-0183Take Your Company Public the easy way!