Yesterday, I drove to downtown LA to attend the Los Angeles VC and Angel Event put together by fundingpost.com. I heard about the event from one of the LinkedIn groups I joined called “On Startups – The Community for Entrepreneurs”. I thought, well at BizEx we get all kinds of requests from our clients who [...]
Yesterday, I drove to downtown LA to attend the Los Angeles VC and Angel Event put together by fundingpost.com.
I heard about the event from one of the LinkedIn groups I joined called “On Startups – The Community for Entrepreneurs”. I thought, well at BizEx we get all kinds of requests from our clients who are primarily small business owners. Perhaps Angel/VC funding might be a good option for some of them.
The place was packed and it was standing room only if you got there late. Everyone attending was an Entrepreneur, which was cool. They all had their vision and it was clearly something they were passionate about.
The consensus on the economy from the speaker was generally optimistic. That the bottom is past us and now was a good time to invest wisely in businesses. The ability to raise capital was still challenging as there was less of it out there, but there are still funds available. There were some concerns stated about the anti business legislation coming from Washington. Otherwise, it was all positive on the future.
I learned three things about asking for money from and Angel/VC investor.
1. The Management Team is what they are primarily interested in. They want scrappy Entrepreneurs who have found a way to survive the downturn. If they can manage these tough times, then it should only get easier as times get better.
2. The Business Plan should be short and to the point. Most of the speakers didn’t read anything beyond the summary page. So keep it short and pithy! Those who did read them were more concerned about the thought process that went into the plan then anything else. It is important to be consistent in what you say, which evidently was a common problem they all faced from the plans they reviewed. Finally, the plan is only as good as its execution, so make sure its clearly executable.
3. The Financial Analysis was not talked about in too much detail. There seemed to be a belief that you could make projections look like anything you wanted it to look like, lol. Again, they were more concerned about the assumptions made and the though processes behind it. I think they learn more about the Entrepreneur then anything else through this process.
In general, the speakers were primarily interested in scalable businesses that can be grown to at least 10 times their valuation size, and maybe that wasn’t big enough. Also, they wanted Capital Efficient models. Which I interpreted to mean they wanted their money to stretch farther now then ever. They do not want to invest money to pay off debt. They invest money to grow scalable businesses.
I talked to most of the Speakers after the panel discussion, as I do for every event I attend. Most of the guys were looking for pre-revenue businesses, so I don’t know how good a fit it was for BizEx. We like businesses that are successful and making lots of money! I did learn a few things though, so it was worth attending.
By Michael S. Davidson | BizEx Business Broker Profile | 310-882-2200 Ext 101Want to know what your business is worth? BizEx Business Brokers has a fun and interesting tool available for small business owners. Just answer some basic questions and our site will show you the estimated value of your company. The valuation process is based on the Multiple of Earnings Method, which is the most common [...]
Want to know what your business is worth?
BizEx Business Brokers has a fun and interesting tool available for small business owners. Just answer some basic questions and our site will show you the estimated value of your company.
The valuation process is based on the Multiple of Earnings Method, which is the most common process used for small business valuation. It’s a fairly simplistic tool, but it’s online and it’s free.
Free Online Business Evaluation Tool
I would appreciate any feedback you might have as we’d like to create a version 2 down the road.
Thanks!
By Michael S. Davidson | BizEx Business Broker Profile | 310-882-2200 Ext 101Like most small business owners in Los Angeles and throughout Southern California, we’ve heard about the benefits of hosting our own blog. After exploring this further, we found out about the time commitment and it made us cringe. Two or three blog posts a week? We don’t have time for that. We are so busy; [...]
Like most small business owners in Los Angeles and throughout Southern California, we’ve heard about the benefits of hosting our own blog. After exploring this further, we found out about the time commitment and it made us cringe. Two or three blog posts a week? We don’t have time for that. We are so busy; we have a hard time getting out of the office most days!
So we delay and explore other ways to promote our business and wait for someone else to figure out the magic recipe on how to blog time and cost effectively.
Then one day the phone rings and I spend 30 to 45 minutes talking to another first time Buyer who is interested in buying a business. Most of which is spent going over some really basic things they need to know before moving forward. BizEx, our company who specializes in brokering the sale of small and medium sized businesses, gets calls like this almost every day. So I decided to condense these conversations into writing and posted “How to Buy a Business” on my website, and for Business Sellers, How to Sell a Business just to save myself from another daily 45 minute conversation.
Then it dawned on me that this is really what blogging should be about. We should blog to save us and our client’s time and money, by sharing the information they need to fulfill their part of the business sales process. Things that they really need to know and would derive significant benefit from. It’s all about efficiency.
BizEx’s core mission is the support of Entrepreneurialism, and we have a lot to give. We use a consultative approach which requires us to learn what is most critical about every business we represent from the owners who are experts at what they do. Our Brokers specialize in a variety of industries including Retail businesses, Restaurants, Manufacturing companies, Dry Cleaners, Service related businesses like Film and Entertainment companies, Internet ecommerce businesses, and a host of other businesses that would take too much space to list. We have a wealth of information we can share for the benefit of entrepreneurs that we take for granted: Information that would promote the sales cycle and reduce the risk and anxiety associated with the purchase of a business.
Are there SEO benefits we can derive from our blogging efforts? Sure. For Google, content is king. The better the quality of information we provide, the more Google, Yahoo, MSN, Bing and other search engines are going to like us. This will equate to higher search engine rankings for our best work.
So now we’re bloggers. We plan on writing a lot more posts in the near future. We hope our fellow entrepreneurs will find them interesting enough to read and comment on.
Welcome to the Biz Blog!
By Michael S. Davidson | BizEx Business Broker Profile | 310-882-2200 Ext 101
