Taking A Company Public: What You Must Do To Succeed

IPOs and Taking Your Company Public: Why Do Public Companies Fail? There are a few things that one needs to consider when strategizing to take a business public on a major exchange: corporate structure, the speed and efficiency at which the IPO is facilitated, the market creation post public with corporate publicity strategies and investor relations, relationships to secure ongoing financing and finally strategic growth through acquisition.

The corporate structure is the foundation to the company which includes a strong ‘C’ level leadership boasting a pedigree of steeped experience and professional track record.

The board of directors must be seasoned and solid composed of industry specialists in the finance, advisory, legal and distribution sectors of the industry and finally the corporations strategic alliances must be in place and strong to pad the business model and help the company grow.

The speed at which the company achieves a trading symbol is important not only to the company but the seed capital investors who want a rapid turnaround on their investment. The audit, SEC filing, 15c11 and FINRA approval need to be orchestrated by experts to complete this task in a timely manner or this process can crush your company as opposed to enhancing it.

Now that you have your trading symbol you need to create the market. Don’t count on your market maker or broker dealer to do this as they are simply a vessel to complete trades and vouch for your company on the securities level. You need powerful investor relations (IR) and corporate publicity. You should also consider publicity strategies for your ‘C’ level executives to brand them as industry experts to add legitimacy and strength to your presence and market position.

Don’t forget PIPES and other post public securities monetization solutions. These companies can offer a lifeline if you’re company is seeking expansion or acquisition capital. Make sure you get references! The last thing you want is a PIPE firm that gives you a 60% LTV (or less) against your stock and then crucifies your company by dumping the stock, ouch!

If your company is in the correct phase of evolution, growing and ready for that next level, think: OTCBB. It’s fast and relatively affordable and if you’re corporate strategies are in place you could rake in some serious capital fast for your corporate expansion.

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

Why Are You Taking Your Company Public? Evolve Or Die! As the owner of a corporate consulting firm that takes companies public and steps into public entities with a turnaround team to fix dying companies, there are two realities of corporate strategies that ring true in any and all industries when it comes to creating successful companies and those realities are: few things work and nothing works for long. Evolve or die, the decision is yours. What works today didn’t work ten years ago and won’t work ten years from now.

Promotional strategies, inter industry alliances, legal loopholes and board member’s bartering chips are forever spinning and mutating and like Zen seem to change shape just as the issues that make a strategies template seem to be defined and duplicatable.

Constantly update your publicity technologies. Always get the opinion of different peer groups who represent polar opposites in the market place before you roll out a new product or service. Before you make a decision have a backup plan and a backup plan to that plan. Have your CFO’s work audited by outside sources. Run credit checks on executives before they are promoted and find out if they are trying to live above their means, if so, they have the ‘grass is greener’ disease and will never be satisfied and will always be looking for a better deal. Employees like this can’t be trusted to help carry a company.

If you are a business owner, your job should be finding someone more qualified than you to run and grow your company. Always have multiple streams of revenue. If you are in the service industry, diversify by offering some products. If you are in the product industry (retail type) partner with some service oriented companies to earn commissions off of their efforts and your customer base.

Always be on a lookout for strategic partners and never be afraid to network. Keep updating your business plan. When raising capital stay out of debt and offer equity instead and when you offer equity in return for investment, pick inter industry alliances to raise capital from. Use a publicist and publicize everything! If you can’t afford a publicist put out press releases keeping your industry and potential clients informed of what you’re doing.

The above is just a little advice that I give to each client before initiating the structuring process of a Pre IPO. These realities will hold true today, next year and as long as commerce exists.

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

Investor relations services: how to truly dominate the public market. If you have a public company or are in the process of taking your company public on the OTCBB or any other reputable exchange the reader must realize that going public is the easy part, having a successful public offering and preserving the longevity of your public entity is another topic all together. As a corporate strategies and public offering facilitator our firm is often called in after a company has a disastrous public offering or they’ve teamed up with the wrong service solutions that pump and dump their equity positions.

Here is the problem that most companies make when they are going public: companies don’t budget properly for general corporate publicity or solid investor relations strategies for the first year that their company is public. Investor relations and publicity stock promotion activity should be at the forefront of every public CEO’s mind.

If you are signing a large contract, publicize it with press releases, viral promotion and TV and radio expert panel discussions. When we take on a company for serious investor relations our campaigns are obviously completely customized but here is the skeletal structure of a prototypical campaign: strong viral publicity strategy consisting of video, article and press release submission, social and news book marking, logo and image posts and after this information has assimilated we get the client on prominent TV expert panel discussions with their name, company name and stock symbol on the screen.

Lastly, we then run two simultaneous 30 day stock promotion intensives with a massive injection of investor promotional concepts on both sides each day which consist of newsletters and stock alerts to ultra-active investors and other strategies daily.

The important thing to remember is that the above must happen monthly for the first six months to a year in order for your company to successfully trade. There is no other way around it, you must budget for your investor relations campaigns or your venture simply will not work.

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

Take My Company Public: The ‘Wheel’ Approach

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!

Our firm takes small companies and industry genre leaders public in the United States. We specialize in the OTCBB, A to Z facilitation as well as NASDAQ IR and strategies consulting. We work with global corporate entities from Greece to China, from South America to Europe. I say this not to boast or market myself but to give you some comfort that what you are about to read is based purely on experience and absolutely objective and if you are about to take your company public or trying to turn-around or restructure your public entity, this information will be of tremendous help to you.

I see companies rise and fall before and after the ‘going public’ process. Some companies have great ideas and constantly struggle, some are hardly worth their weight in pocket fuzz but thrive and to understand why we must step back and look at a public and pre public concept as you would a globe that you can set on a desk and spin slowly over and over again. Stand on the desk and kneel on the ground, stand on your hands if you have to and the point of this exercise is to look at your public entity from every imaginable angle searching for any and all chinks in the armor.

Think past the basics of going public. Any informed CEO, COO or CFO of a pre or post public entity will comprehend the basics: you’ll have a first round seed capital raise, you’ll need a solid board of directors and solid executives with an appealing pedigree, your company needs a viable and yes, ‘recession proof’ product or service. You need a solid pre public corporate publicity strategy to make your company stand out like a blinding beacon with strategies that wrap around the corporation as well as each executive to increase the market awareness of their existence in the industry power structure and of course you’ll need solid and massive post public investor relations to stabilize and grow that stock price.

Now here is something that you may not have taken into consideration but is a necessity to filling in the gaps of your corporate profile as well as strengthening those invisible inferiorities in the corporate armor. Political power structure contacts are a must. Yes, political in every sense of the word. I mean you need strong contacts in your operating country’s political electoral system of influence to gain access to those ‘no bid’ contracts. It’s a mandatory evil that separates the men from the boys. Get to know lobbyists, congressmen, political attorneys, senators and most importantly get on a first name basis with the direct executive assistants for each of these players as they are the ones that will make the introductions.

Your face needs to be seen in the papers and journals alongside of these power players. Your name needs to be mentioned in cigar filled rooms where these individuals congregate. Don’t think for a second that hard work, blood sweat and tears will get your company to the next level; it’s all about connections and the public conception of you and your company.

Simultaneously you need to take into consideration the social political conception of your company. Truth be told, celebrities and corporations get involved with charities and socially conscientious callings such as Poverty Awareness, Haiti Financial Assistance, African Relief and like strategies not necessarily because they have a spiritual awakening and want to make the world a better place.

These companies are piggybacking off of the free press and the social idea that free money to charity somehow justifies the means in which they earned it. Free handout charity affiliation has a way of wiping the slate clean and telling the public that if they buy your product or use your service they are, in some strange way, making the world a better place and instantly something that was once considered a guilty pleasure (such as a $5 coffee and $8 scone from Starbucks) is now a socially responsible action because .02 cents per $20 net profit intake goes to pay for coffee beans that grow in a third world country that is trying to ‘get by’ and grow organic, whatever.

Going public is one thing, staying public is something entirely different, staying public and profitable is almost unheard of. Increase your chances of success by looking at all the angles!

Corporate Power Strategies That Work! , Take Your Company Public, call Princeton Corporate Solutions at 267-233-0183Public Strategies Consulting success 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!

I consult in the turnaround sector with public companies on the Pinks, OTCBB, London Exchange, Frankfurt Exchange and every exchange in-between and everyone seems to have the same issue: there stock isn’t trading at the price they desire and they are dying to find a way to fix the problems that are hindering their trade. It usually comes down to a few basic elements. Use each of these elements with caution as this industry is full of predatory organizations and consultants and can be dangerous to amateurs. If you’re a newbie, that’s ok. Do what you can but know when you are in over your head and turn the remaining process over to people that swim with sharks for a living.

Public company structuring and turnaround strategies typically center around the elements of: corporate publicity, individual executive publicity, lack of an experienced publicist, lack of strategic alliances and lack of the proper promotion that is conducive to getting stock investors to pull the trigger.

Corporate publicity can be broken down into the immediate and ongoing use of: press releases, viral marketing video and article submission, corporate blogs, investor relations, market maker or broker dealer that is affective and of course the almighty strategic alliances that build hype and build power behind your brand.

Another major component that most companies are lacking is ‘Individual Executive Publicity’ by use of press release, viral market: video uploads with interviews and how to type material, article submission and personal blogs that center around the particular industry genre issues. It is important to make each executive stand out like a beacon in the industry and to press the reality or create the reality that your executive staff is composed of the who’s who of your industry.

Next you’ll need a corporate publicist with a focus on getting your CEO, CFO and/or corporate executives on TV and radio panel discussions as industry authority as well as newspaper and magazine articles and interviews about your company and its executives.

Don’t forget the importance of ‘Strategic Partnerships’. Announce new partnerships with multiple press releases, photo ops and articles. Pick strategic partners that have name recognition or are about to be in the public eye to piggy back off of the publicity they are receiving.

If you are an OTCBB or Pink Sheets company email campaigns to stock Investors are a quick way to get a nice bump in exposure and stock price but too many of these campaigns done the wrong way can hurt your company so be careful. Your investor relations consultant should have you listed on multiple stock alert services that run ongoing back to back. And the last but not least, the old fashion snail mail ‘Direct mail to stock investors’ can be the added bang to your stock price rising and stabilizing.

Turning around a company can and expensive proposition today but can increase your company’s value exponentially if done by an experienced professional. It’s a process that’s worth it to companies with an eye toward longevity.

Need A Corporate Consultant?, call Princeton Corporate Solutions at 267-233-0183We Can Transform Your Business

Selling Shareholder Offering: The Key To Raising Fast Capital For Pre-Public Companies. As a consultant who has taken many companies public on the OTCBB (Over The Counter Bulletin Boards), consulted on even more and turned around and structured more companies I can even count, there are a few common threads inherent in all of them.

Most of the companies pursuing capital from angel investors, private investors, private equity firms or small groups of professionals looking for a quick in and out situation with rapid capitalization did three things that made all the difference in streamlining their raise.

First the executives structured their entity to attract investors which by default strengthened their corporate infrastructure. Now they are proposing investment opportunities from more of a position of strength.

Second they chose a team (in these cases they chose our consulting firm) with a proven track record of success with organizing companies for acquisition, merger and taking companies public.

The third element that is common in most successful enterprises which are seeking a first round of seed capital to fund their ‘going public’ ambitions is demonstrating confidence to the investor with a “selling shareholder offering”. Obviously this last element tests the skill of the consultants going back and forth with the SEC during the comments stage but this demonstrates confidence and organization by the company wishing to raise capital.

A ‘selling shareholder offering’ tells the investor (if not purely in the initial documents then in the phone conferences leading up the a check being cut) that the company has an organized pre public and post public investor relations strategy, general corporate publicity strategy and a market maker that’s built to last (mostly the former than the later). By offering seed investors the ability for massive profitability by buying your seed shares for fifty cents with a public offering price anticipated at $2.00. What real investor would turn this down?

Offer your seed investors an ‘easy in, quick out’ funding option and watch them swarm to your offering in droves. Let these investors create your float and let your company’s performance and hardcore investor relations take care of the rest!

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!

As a global corporate strategies firm we are beginning to get many inquiries from foreign corporations that wish to take advantage of the rapid growth capabilities of trading stock in the US. Getting set up with a consulting firm that specializes in fund-raising mechanisms such as private placement memorandum, direct public offering and/or taking one’s company public on the OTCBB can help a foreign entity obtain virtually instant gratification of raising large amounts of capital in an expedient manner.

Chinese companies typically have similar questions and concerns when they contact us such as: How long does it take to go public? What are my options for raising capital with a US structure? Do I need to have an American corporation? How much equity should I give up to the public? Can I merge my Chinese company with my American company to strengthen the American corporation’s asset value? And How do we sell the stock to the public once we have a symbol and are ready to trade?

How long does it take to go public? To go public on the OTCBB you need to have a solid business plan and corporate structure, usually a pre-public round is done with a Private Placement Memorandum to offer discounted stock in return for equity seed capital that will fund the ‘go public process’. This process can take a few weeks to a few months, it all depends on the deal and what you’re offering the investors at this stage. Next you’ll want to do your third-party audit and your S1, after your audit is done and your S1 is filed you’ll enter into the ‘comments’ stage where the SEC is going back and forth with you or your lawyer or your consultant (whoever is helping you go public). The comments stage can be anywhere from a couple weeks to a few months, the more unorganized the company, the longer the audit and comments stage will take to complete. The average for an organized company with the audit and S1 prep done simultaneously is around 4 to 6+ months (the more unorganized the company the longer it takes).

What are my options for raising capital with a US structure? Raising capital in the US happens quicker than in other countries because of the vast wealth in North America and its position in the global market place. Invest-able deals are all in the eye of the investor. The challenge is getting in front of investors with a track record of investing in your particular industry genre.

Do I need to have an American corporation? Yes, to go public in the United States, you need to have an American corporation. This doesn’t necessarily mean that it has to become your primary corporation. You can use one corporation as your operational entity and one as a subsidiary but to strengthen and stabilize your share price you’ll need to eventually show growth and assets in your US entity.

How much equity should I give up to the public? This is a decision that will be made with your attorney and Board of Directors and the decision is based off of your company’s industry position, the value of empirical assets like equipment, contracts, patents, current foreign based share holders etc.

Can I merge my Chinese company with my American company to strengthen the American corporation’s asset value? Yes absolutely. This is the most popular technique to show current and future shareholders that your company will be a long term public player. The more asset ‘skin’ you are able to put in the game in the beginning the better for the longevity of your enterprise.

How do we sell the stock to the public once we have a symbol and are ready to trade? During your ‘going public’ process you’ll be attached to a market maker. The market maker, your consultant and your publicist (if you don’t have one your consultant will find one for you) will work together at all fronts to help you leverage your new public entity. Your publicist will have authors in newspapers and magazines do write-ups on your company as they help you label yourself globally as a new industry powerhouse, each of your executive team members will also have their own publicity strategies going as well so that your publicist can place them on expert TV and radio panels as industry experts which brings website visitation, new distribution opportunities, personal and corporate branding and investor confidence which is all conducive to an increase in your share price. All of this will bring call volume into your market maker while they are selling your stock to new contacts as well as calling on their established database of investors. The process is typically audited quarterly by your consultant to find dead weight or weaknesses and tighten everything up.

Using the public fundraising strategies based in the US is a wise decision to grow your business. Finding the right consultant is crucial. The right consultant can make or break your efforts to go public in the United States.

Foreign, Indian and Chinese Companies, Take Your Company Public, call Princeton Corporate Solutions at 267-233-0183Take Your Company Public the easy way!

Investors: Pre IPO Companies

Those who are able to achieve higher yields on their investments typically don’t have a broker and don’t listen to the advice of a financial planner. After all, if either of them knew what they were talking about they wouldn’t be hustling others into allowing them to learn the trade game off of other people’s money.

The reality is the few that have gained a comprehension for seeking out and getting involved with trades that open the floodgates to massive profits use their own money and operate as part of a small, tight knit group. The members of this ‘group’ always have their feelers out like tentacles sucking up and analyzing potential transactions, immediately looking for strategic elements and immediately dumping 99% as they don’t meet the criteria.

Two major components that professional investors who use their own money and are able to consistently pick winning transactions are companies that are in merger and/or acquisition mode and companies that are seeking seed capital specifically to go public.

Let’s focus on the latter. Companies seeking seed capital to go public are often financially viable companies with modest liquidity but are taking on seed investors so that they can meet the SEC minimum criteria of having 40 investors on the books to qualify for going public. Investors that are able to, literally, make millions per transaction have a way of getting into these opportunities by connecting with consultants who take companies public.

If you are able to get involved with these consulting firms and if you have some capital to designate as a seed investor, you can literally be placed in 4,5 or even 6+ pre IPO investments per year. When you are one of the 40 investors in a pre public OTCBB corporation you are usually investing seed capital at a fraction of the future public price by way of DPO (Direct Public Offering). The difference between what you pay for the seed stock and what the company charges per share when public is the profit.

It isn’t at all out of the ordinary to buy seed stock at 50 cents and have that stock gain in value of $1.00 to $1.50 when the company goes public and yes, you just made 50 cents to $1.00 net profit on each share. The great thing is you can often invest as a seed investor with as little as $5,000 to $10,000. If you have more capital you can spread it out over multiple pre-IPO opportunities. Seek out the pre- public companies and make a fortune!

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