Funding Your Future Beyond Banks

When I started this book project, my first thought was a short eBook regarding getting business bank loans for startups and business growth initiatives. That mission is accomplished, and you will find that work in an appendix to this book. However, I realized this when reflecting over my four-plus decades of business experience involved in new business startups, business growth initiatives, and acquisition of companies and major strategic assets, there are multiple sources of cash I have used. There is so much more to share. I do believe this text just scratches the surface. Yet, best to get started. I decided to share some of these sources via a bit of a ‘how to’ as many techniques are not straightforward to the professional starting down the startup or expansion road. Certainly, versions of what I’ll share are not original. The difference is I used them, and they worked. I used them, and they created the success I was after, whether it was a Startup I was working on or the acquisition of a company. My objective is to make sure these can work for you too. This book will not cover mezzanine financing, venture capital, or issuing bonds. These three cash sources are higher-risk alternatives for the owner entrepreneur than what I’ll cover in the following pages. They also require a unique set of circumstances, expertise, market dynamics, and much more. And they are not the only three beyond banks. We also could discuss mergers, issuance of various types of stock offerings, or initial public offerings (IPOs). All of these are also fascinating financial vehicles that take on a life of their own and most often have the effect of drastically decreasing time to market. Decreasing time to market does assume the organization receiving those funds knows what to do with the money. This is not always the case. The good news is ‘the rest of the story’ as Paul Harvey used to say (a radio commentator who periodically opined on various business, social, and cultural type issues – he so nicely entertained from 1976 to 2009) is what contained herein does begin preparation for all forms of other people’s money, including those riskier sources. A job well done regarding the preparation, operational, and process steps would prepare a startup or business growth initiative for any form of capital acquisition. These are a subset of the steps business must take regardless of the capital source. You will not lose any ground in your addition of the knowledge, skills, and disciplines you need to secure the use of other people’s money from any source by reading the rest of this book. There is a real good chance you may find yourself needing to borrow less. Another objective for this book is to introduce you to some creative thinking, including some real yet brief case studies, which enable you to search and find alternatives to debt. Yet another objective is to guide you and your organization to understand sound process fundamentals, thereby ensuring success and positioning a more effective and comfortable payback of growth funds. This, as promised, goes beyond banks.