PREMIUM TOOL
Investment Readiness Scorecard
Anybody that is going to IPO, is owned by a PE firm or is looking for a big M&A exit knows about “Investment Readiness”. However startups and scaleups don’t use this approach and hacks as much as they should. It’s simple and obvious really. Follow a process to get your business into a position where it is ready to raise money from banks, lenders, investors and institutions.
At the core of this is having a good comprehensive and consistent perspective on what your potential investors are looking for. For a business to be “investment ready” it typically means they are actively managing all the pieces of the puzzle needed, and have all the pitch materials ready to support that story. Impressing investors is really the only way path to a successful raise.
This premium tool follows a step-by-step approach to work out your business strengths and areas of weakness to prepare best for a successful fundraise. It is based on the investment screening approaches used by world-class corporate M&A groups, the very best PE houses and some of the more sophisticated/larger (i.e. quant-driven) VC funds. And of course McKinsey, BCG and Bain all have their own variants on this model they use with their $$$ advisory services.
The approach is based on the SOAR model – strengths, opportunities (weaknesses), aspirations (use-of-funds) and results (proveable traction and deliverables). Having an objective perspective on that can help you tailor not only your pitch deck and story, but also your overall ask and fundraising strategy.
As early stage most often the weakest area is around the market opportunity and/or economic capture model. At later stages it is likely traction and growth expansion that needs focus (i.e. general GTM, I18n, or Ansoff trade-offs). But then these are things we can work on in your positioning, story-telling and slides.
From Seed until Series D/E this is a powerful conversation starter and can be used to faciliate Board level conversations and longer-term strategy planning.