Pegasus - Preparing For Funding

General

Preparing your company for funding of any sort, either equity or debt is a complex and time consuming process. Most management teams of start-up organisations or growing SMEs have little or no experience of what is required in preparing their companies for investment.

Some of the questions that should be considered include: Do I need to strengthen my management team? Is my business model scaleable enough? How do I value my company today and post funding? What should be included in a business plan and how detailed should it be for the different types of funding? Is there a correct structure that a business plan should take? What are investors looking for? How should I approach investors or lenders and who are they? What should I include in my investor presentation? What questions should I prepare for? The list is endless.

Pegasus Funding Resources can help you answer these questions and help you through this maze. Listed below are the 'Investor Readiness' services that we can offer you to increase your chances of success.

Business Concept Reviews

A Pegasus 'Business Concept Review Workshop' assists companies determine whether or not their business model is scalable and robust enough to attract investment. Other assumptions that are often questioned may also include: Are the routes to market the most suitable? Is the sales and marketing plan realistic? Is the product or service being offered competitive or not? What need is being fulfilled? How will the competition react? What additional staff may be required to hit the projected targets? How do the financials stack up? How much investment is actually required?

It is much easier to answer all these questions with objective third parties who will bring a fresh perspective to the challenges and who will not be emotionally involved with internal issues.

Each 'Business Concept Review Workshop' is tailor made for the requirements of each individual company. A workshop could last up to 3 days but the majority are completed in a single day.

Business Plan Scoring

A good, well structured and targeted Business Plan is essential if you are to succeed in your fund raising process. Most Managing Directors have written numerous internal 'milestone' business plans, but few have ever written a 'Winning' Funding Business Plan. The two are very different and it is not something that you have to do everyday.

How do you decide what structure to follow? What should be included in the executive summary? How detailed should the sales and marketing plan be? What assumptions to include? Do I need a SWOT? Are full three year financials required and in what detail? What should be in the main plan and what goes into an appendix? The questions are endless.

Pegasus Funding Resources have not only written many funding business plans but have also been asked to score plans for a number of networks. We have built up a template of what we believe the structure and content of a business plan should be.

Pegasus Funding Resources offers three separate business plan scoring services:

	Bronze: A free service where the plan is scored against our template and the scores for each section are returned to you by email.
	Silver: This charged for service is the same as the bronze but comments are added to each section and subsection in our template and then returned to you by email.
	Gold: The same as the silver service but instead of returning the scores and comments to you by email we will present our findings to you face to face with time for discussion. Prices will depend on your location.

Training on How to Write Targeted Business Plans

A half day workshop on how to write a targeted business plan is offered to those people that not only have the time but also the confidence to write their own business plans. The workshop covers what investors are looking for, what the structure of the plan should be, the required content and how the financials should be presented. A full day workshop is also available.

Business Plan Mentoring

Hourly business plan telephone mentoring services are available from Pegasus Funding Resources.

Writing a winning funding business plan is perhaps one of the most important tasks in securing your company's future but it is also not only a difficult task but is one of which the writer normally has little if any previous experience.

The most common mistake that is made is to tell the investor or lender what you want to say rather than what he or she wants to read about. It is also vitally important to understand how a business plan is read and why it is seldom read from page 1 to the end.

Telephone mentoring will help you understand the importance of the correct structure of the plan, what needs to be included in the short but all important executive summary, why the financial model should be flexible and driver based and what should be included and excluded from every section of the words and financial model.

It does not matter at what stage you are in writing your plan. You may want advice before you start, or half way through when you have hit a stumbling block or after the plan has been written but has not produced the results that you expected.

Business plan telephone mentoring services are purchased by the hour with a minimum of two hours. The time purchased need not be taken in one session but can be spread over a number of pre-booked periods, to enable progress to be made and then further advice to be sought.

To learn more please contact Peter Kelly on 01932 244810 or peter.kelly@pegasusfunding.co.uk.

Business Plan Rectification Workshop

A 'Business Plan Rectification Workshop' is ideal for those companies that have already written their business plan, but who need help in the final stages to tailor and adjust it to meet the particular requirements of the funders. The structure and content of a business plan, together with the executive summary are crucial in winning the attention of either lenders or investors.

A Business Plan Rectification Workshop is either a 1 day or 2 day session, at the end of which your management team will be able to complete the plan themselves. The re-worked plan can then be re-submitted to Pegasus for final comments and approval.

Business Plan Creation

A full business plan creation service is offered for those companies who prefer to spend their time on running their business and gaining revenue rather than attempting to write the plan themselves.

Pegasus will write your plan for you, but you and your management team will be closely involved at every stage. The process begins with a two to three day onsite workshop with you and your management team. During this period we follow our tried and tested method of extracting all the relevant information that is required for writing a targeted plan. The plan and a full financial model is then written, off site, over the next few weeks with numerous telephone conversations and emails between all parties.

Company Valuations

A part of the funding process that is often forgotten is that of properly valuing your company. If you do not know how much your company is worth today, how can you judge what equity % to offer any new investor? Will you be giving away too much of your future profits because you have incorrectly valued your business?

Pegasus can assist you with valuing your company.

Preparing to Present to Investors

You have completed your business concept review, prepared your plan and financials, contacted any number of banks and investors and you have reached the final stage, a formal presentation to either a banker or a panel of investors. This is perhaps the hardest stage of all and a large number of organisations will fall at the last hurdle. There are three areas that you have to consider. Who is going to present and have they been trained on how to present? What should be presented? And most important of all what types of questions are they going to ask you?

Pegasus can help you in all three stages:

	Presentation Creation
	Most funding presentations fail because the presenter presents what he or she wants to say and not what the audience wants to hear. The Pegasus presentation formula overcomes this problem. Let us create your presentation for you.
	Presentation Coaching
	Not presented before? Then let us coach you in how to present to investors.
	Q & A Coaching
	What questions are likely to be asked? What weaknesses will they home in on? How should I answer that question? What should I definitely not say? Pegasus has attended many investor presentations over the years and has built up a template of the most frequently asked questions that you can expect, together with those that have defeated some Managing Directors, and even those unexpected ones that could catch you out.

Click here for the Investor Presentation Coaching documentation

Non-Executive Director Recruitment

When Investors or Bank Managers look at the viability of a company they take many factors into consideration, a few of which are:

Is the business concept scaleable?
Are the assumptions in the business plan realistic?
What barriers to entry are there?
Do they own the IP?
Is there a compelling need?
Are the targets achievable?
How strong is the competition?
What are the unique selling points?

Equally important, however, are:

How experienced are the management team?
Have they the faith in their idea to back it with their own capital?

Pegasus Funding Resources can assist you to overcome these challenges by recruiting Non-Executive Directors who not only bring their experience with them but in many instances will also invest in your company. In this way two barriers to investment are overcome.

To find out more please contact:

Peter Kelly on 01932 244810 or Paula Howson on 020 8979 5833

Or email: recruitment@pegasusfunding.co.uk.

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