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What have we learned from 2021 and how should you approach fundraising in 2022?

Posted on January 20, 2022 Written by Administrator

Despite all the issues during the last two years business have still managed to raise capital. This will continue in 2022 although the number of successful raises will still be fewer than it was in 2019.

Let’s review some 2021 stats for early-stage businesses, and then offer suggestions to help your next equity raise.

All data included here is based on UK headquartered companies who raised equity capital from 01 January to 01 December in comparative years. Data comes from Beauhurst.

Raises – business stage

In reviewing the raises in 2021 we’ve focused in on earlier rounds to give a picture of what is happening in this part of the market.

The number of rounds by broad business stage shows that seed stage companies accounted for nearly half of all the rounds in the year.

Excludes dead and exited businesses.

Raises – Round Size

Often businesses do a number of smaller rounds, and it’s possible that the same business is being counted twice in any category.

What do we see when we look at the data for the number of raises by round size? 70%+ of all rounds were under a million and 40% were under £250k.

Does this mean you should raise £250k or less because there seems to be more activity? Running multiple smaller rounds is worth considering. However, the strategy depends on which type of investor you’re targeting.

Remember that this data shows reported raises. No one reports unsuccessful raises, and a conservative estimate is that half of businesses fail to reach their target.

Given this how should those with early-stage businesses prepare for a successful fundraise?

A clear proposition and USP

Remember how competitive it is. We receive hundreds of applications each month and see the same business ideas over and over again. A good idea alone is never enough. Make sure the problem you’re solving and how you’re solving it are clear. Use simple language. Strip out the jargon, minimise the adjectives and provide a description that your least business savvy friend can understand. If no one can understand what you do, no one will want to invest.

Differentiation is also key. What makes you so special? Everyone has a competitor- even if that is the option of doing nothing. So, outline how you are unique, how this is sustainable and be sure to take an objective viewpoint. It’s easy to believe you are better than your competitors, but does anyone who doesn’t work for your business think that? If you don’t know, find out.

A standout team

Investors invest in people, and many would take a good idea with a great team over a great idea with a good team. So, make sure you have a standout team. That includes sector experience, a balanced management team in terms of functional experience and any previous exits are a bonus.

If you are light in one area, it’s good to seek an advisor or non-executive director as that can give confidence to potential investors. They’ll also provide valuable advice and contacts.

Showing traction

Coming armed with proof that you have product-market fit and sustained growth goes a long way. If you have any big brands as customers or partners, highlight this as it provides further validation for your business. This is especially important for consumer brands and marketplaces. We see a lot of businesses in these categories. Unless you have a growing customer base, your business is little more than an idea and therefore perceived as a big risk by investors.

Professional preparation

Getting investment ready requires a lot of work, including preparing numerous documents such the balance sheet, the subscription agreement, the cap table.

We always recommend companies work with an advisor to create their deal as it helps ensure all information is available, professionally presented and credible. There are short-cuts, such as downloading templates, but the risk of a poorly presented deal is just not worth taking.

Effective targeting of investors

Be clear on the types of investor you want to target, be it regional funds, angel investors, or VCs. Then develop a targeted list.

If possible, work with a network like Envestors, which has deep knowledge of the players in the space as well as pre-existing relationships with investors. This approach will take away the guess work of trying to engage with potential investors on your own.

The early-stage investment in 2022 is shaping up to be much like the past year. This means preparing well so you are ready for the competition for funds, and the amount of time your fundraising will take.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Chantelle Arneaud is from Envestors. Envestors’ digital investment platform brings together entrepreneurs and investors across geographies, communities and sectors – creating the single marketplace for early-stage investment in the UK.

Envestors partners with accelerators, incubators and angel networks to provide a white-label platform empowering them to promote deals, engage investors and connect to other networks.

Founded in 2004, Envestors has helped more than 200 high growth businesses raise more than £100m through its own private investment club.

Envestors is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority.

Web: https://www.envestors.co.uk/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/envestors-llp/

Twitter: @EnvestorsLondon

What Does It Take To Be A Successful Property Developer?

Posted on July 22, 2021 Written by Administrator

I’ve lost count of the number of students I teach whose initial ambition was to become their own Project Manager. If you want to be a Property Developer, don’t do that. Instead, you want to be the CEO who hires a Project Manager to manage your projects for you, to be your eyes and ears on the project and to report back to you.

As a developer, you won’t be drawing up the architectural plans or laying any bricks personally. Instead, you’ll be hiring an architect and employing a main contractor who’ll take care of this. In fact, as a developer, you’ll probably have a couple of dozen different professionals working on your project. This is where the leverage comes in. Even though each of these people may have decades of experience in their respective careers, all you need to do is pay a relatively modest fee to hire them to work on your project. You are simply creating a team of professionals to work under your Project Manager, with you sitting at the top of the tree as the CEO. Now, look at you! Suddenly, you’re heading up a team of professionals with hundreds of years of experience between them and who have completed hundreds of development projects. And the best part is that you don’t have to shell out for their services personally; their fees will be paid for by the development finance.

If you find yourself having newbie nerves, think about Richard Branson. He recently launched his first cruise line, Virgin Voyages. But he didn’t start this venture, having spent thirty years in the cruise line industry, rising from cabin boy to captain. Instead, he’s simply an entrepreneur who saw a great opportunity and who used his existing CEO skills to pull together a team that already has all of the experience necessary to make it a success. Did he attend that first board meeting thinking, ‘I hope no one asks me what the front end of a boat is called or what it costs to build a cruise liner?’ Probably not. He has a team of people sitting around the table that can answer those questions for him. What he does have are the skills necessary to see an opportunity and build a team capable of taking advantage of it. And, of course, you wouldn’t bet against him succeeding.

Now, your role as a small-scale property developer is of the same mould. Nothing quite as grand as running a cruise line, but the principle is the same. You’ll be playing the role of Richard Branson in your (much smaller) property development business, and your extended team will be on hand to deal with the details and the technical stuff.

So what exactly will you, the developer, be doing? Well, at a high level, your job breaks down into several key roles:

You’ll need to establish your business, strategy, and brand, and decide what type of development you’re going to tackle.
You’ll have to recruit your team of professionals, including architects, solicitors, project managers, structural engineers, etc.
You’ll need to be able to find a supply of good quality, profitable deals. These will need to be analysed to sort the wheat from the chaff and decide which ones are worth pursuing.
You’ll be arranging the finance for your first project, working with both commercial lenders and private investors.

This is all well and good, but what skills do you need to be a property developer? Surely you can’t expect to earn the sort of money developers make without having any talent or knowledge whatsoever? Well, I’ve been training and working with developers for nearly 40 years, and here, in my opinion, are the essential skills that you need to do the job well.

1. Organisational skills

Your property development business won’t happen unless you are highly organised. You also need to be systemised and make sure you establish processes for each part of your business. They take effort and foresight to set up, but they pay big dividends and stop your business from degenerating into a shambles.

2. People skills

Development is fundamentally a people business. Not only will you be working with a team of professionals, but you’ll also be wooing estate agents, lenders, and private investors. This requires the ability to create and build rapport. And, of course, development projects always have a few bumps in the road, so you’ll need to be able to make sure you get to the end with all of your critical relationships intact, ready to go again.

3. Management Skills

Property development is a business, and you need to operate it as such. This means deploying management skills to run your business and being highly disciplined. You’ll also need to stay on top of cash flow, as even profitable deals could fall into the red on their journey unless you manage things effectively.

4. Decision-making skills

Any decision is often better than no decision, and in development, you’ll have a team of professionals to advise you. The problem can arise where the developer needs to make a difficult call, and they dither, hoping some silver bullet solution might suddenly arrive. This dallying has scuppered many a project, frustrating the contractor who can’t get on with things until a decision is made. So when the ball is in your court, make a decision quickly and move on. In development, time is usually money.

5. Hard work

Once you’re up and running, development can be a job you do in your spare time. But you’ll need to put in some hard graft to get started. You’ll also need to be persistent. Great deals don’t grow on trees, and there’s no guarantee you’ll find one quickly. The good news is that this frightens off most of the competition, so if you know what you’re doing and you stick with it, you’re likely to be successful.

6. Education

Your property development education is the glue that holds all of the above together. Can you avoid making any expensive mistakes without getting training? It’s theoretically possible, but then it’s also possible to jump out of a plane without training. The other thing that education gives you is the ability to see opportunities that other developers can’t see. And you’ll want that edge so you can get the best possible deals.

7. Determination

It’s easy to get disheartened. Great deals can be difficult to find, and projects rarely go entirely as planned. The spoils go to the developer who keeps going. But your first project will inevitably be your most challenging, and the journey gets easier as you build your experience and reputation.

Organisational skills, people skills, management skills, decision-making skills, hard work, and determination are already part of the working day for many people. To be a highly successful property developer, add in a little learning. The core skills you require are not specific to the industry, so be a little more Branson.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Ritchie Clapson CEng MIStructE is a veteran property developer of almost 40 years and co-founder of propertyCEO, a nationwide property development and training company that helps people create a successful property development business in their spare time. It makes use of students’ existing life skills while teaching them the property, business, and mindset knowledge they need to undertake small scale developments successfully, with the emphasis on utilising existing permitted development rights to minimize risk and maximize returns.

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How to propel your business to a genuinely transformational level of growth

Posted on July 12, 2021 Written by Administrator

Many businesses grow effectively for a number of years; they achieve this as they have a solid offering, they are delivering some proactive engagement with their market, they work hard, and they close sales.

Inevitably at some point the growth slows down. The practices and processes internally within the business reach their saturation point. They cannot achieve any more sales without doing things differently and all the small changes they make stop yielding results.

At this point the organic growth that the business is capable of has stopped delivering what the business needs. It’s time to think about something new and if you are not inspired by growth through merger or acquisition you need a new idea to generate dynamic growth.

Dynamic growth is about constant change. It’s about stimulating different results by taking new action, and it’s what needs to happen when you reach a profit plateau.

Choosing to be dynamic about your approach to business may be the thing that propels your business to a genuinely transformational level of growth. But where do you start?

Over the last 10 years I have been working on defining the characteristics of highly successful businesses to understand how they harness growth.

When you are thinking about what you need to do to build a dynamic approach to business growth there are three key areas to focus on. These three ‘pillars’ will allow you to make the changes to your organisation necessary to burst through the plateaux.

The First Pillar: Your Customer Journey

The experience that your customer has when they work with your business is everything.

You have a responsibility to shape a journey that not only educates your customer on the value of your offering, but also ensures that they experience your business as credible and professional.

Really robust businesses, that exceed their own growth expectations, have very diverse and well-planned customer journeys; they consider carefully the stages through which their customers travel and the impact that that has on their decision-making journey. As well as a highly tuned customer experience they have internal processes that create productivity and efficiency.

When understanding the challenges of a plateau to business growth the first place to look is in the detail of the customer sales process. A well planned and diverse customer journey that is implemented effectively internally will absolutely maximise the conversion rate and revenue generation.

Dynamic businesses will be thinking today about specifically what experience their customer has when dealing with their business and will be asking questions about how to enhance the quality and content of that journey. Really high quality sales process methodology will allow your business to draw in more customers and make more revenue and ultimately generate more profit.

For change: Put time into interrogating the experience that customers have when working with you. What are the stages that they move through? Is the way that you and your team interact with your clients well defined and diverse? Is their experience one of consistently high quality? Unless the journey your customers undertake is smooth and effective your business will be losing money.

The Second Pillar: Your Customer Communication

In simple terms, one of the most powerful tools your business has is the communication that it uses to reach out to its customers. What we say and how we say it has a huge impact on how much money we make.

The customer communications pillar within your business deals with every communication that your customer is exposed to and looks at how it impacts their decision-making. As the range of channels increases and we have ever more marketing and sales communications to explore, a smart business will look closely at its communications pillar.

Whether it be the business cards you handout at face-to-face meetings, the software you use to generate proposal, or the quality of the telephone calls that your sales team are making to your customers, a really strong communication pillar embraces multiple channels and creates high quality guidelines around how these channels should be used.

It is not simply a case of using email, it is a case of crafting an email that has a powerful impact within the sales communications pillar. Never take your eye off the content, structure, tone and delivery of every sales and marketing activity that comes out of your business. The message here is that if your communications to your customers are not of the highest possible standards, you will not be achieving the highest possible results.

For change: Make sure that you evaluate your customer communications. Go back to basics. Look at all your communications and check them for quality. Setup clear communications guidelines and make sure that your entire team is across them and implementing them.

The Third Pillar: Your People Management

The management area of your business refers to the processes and practises that your organisation uses to ensure that your customer journey is implemented to the highest possible standard.

Management is not simply about the leadership that your team receives. It is about the practises that your business embraces to drive the right outcomes. Within the area of management, you need to look at the structure of your organisation to ensure you have the right number of resources and that each person is working in the right fit in the right role. In truly powerful businesses, every resource in the organisation is lined up behind the customer journey in order that it can be delivered to the highest possible standards.

Once you’re clear that the people in your team are right, you then need to be thinking about how those people communicate with one another internally. Think about how you train and develop those resources to ensure they have the highest possible skill set; understand how performance is managed in an organisation to ensure that everyone is driving towards the right goals and achieving the right targets. All of these areas of your organisation come together to form the management culture that is shaping your business.

If you are focused on ensuring that your people are in an environment where they can perform to their maximum you will achieve better results. So, really dynamic businesses are asking; is my workforce well trained, well recruited and well developed? If the answer to any of those questions is no, it’ll have a negative impact on the amount of money you’re generating.

For change: Review all the members of your team. Are they the right fit? Are they where they can best perform and let their skills truly shine? Is additional training required? Are they all aligned with the vision for the business?

Any business that wants to grow and move past a profit plateau, needs to be dynamic. And being dynamic means taking control of the destiny of your business.

As a business owner or leader having the tools to drive constant growth in your organisation is one of the most powerful skills you can develop.

If you want to beat the fear of a revenue flat line look at the areas above and honestly interrogate how dynamic you are being.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Karen Dunne-Squire is founder of Elation Experts, which is on a mission to empower SME’s by giving them the knowledge and skills to increase revenue, build powerful sales opportunities and create committed, loyal teams that are motivated to drive change. Karen is a sought-after keynote speaker and creator of The Growth Framework, an award-winning methodology, applying ‘Big Business Corporate Insights’ to SMEs in a way that makes practical sense for them.