Take Your Company Public: You Need Strategic Alliances

When an investor is looking at your business they are obviously looking for the basics: an executive team that has worked with other companies in your industry at the exact stage you are at now with a solid track record of success, an active advisory board that is eager to help and has a solid comprehension of your industry, a board of directors that acts as your company’s strategic think tank and action center where the tough issues get dealt with and questions get answered. Investors also want to see that you are in a growth industry and that all involved have the discipline to step out of the emotional ups and downs of a start-up or company seeking capital and look at the business objectively.

All this said, the one aspect to creating a salivating group of investors is your massive and powerful strategic partner database. These partners are able to enhance your company is ways of distribution, sales, contracts, legal, tax etc. The partners that you team up with are often build off of and initiated by the rapport of your executive staff, board of advisers and board of directors. Your corporate attorney and accountant should also contribute heavily to helping you build strategic alliances with like minded companies in their client base. These companies that you are teaming up with allow for rapid expansion and optimal eye candy for people that are interested in placing capital with your company. Having some big names in your corner with the label ‘strategic partner’ just sweetens the pot. Companies thrive and dive on relationships.

If you are considering raising capital with a Regulation D exemption like 504, 505 or 506 (also referred to as a Private Placement Memorandum) chances are, your company will be funded by angel investors, private investors and other private equity money sources. Having a powerful partnership base is like adding a blanket and warm milk to your business plan and PPM when handing if off to the investor, it’s soothing and comforting to see that you’re not alone but you have some big names helping you on the road to success.

Are you thinking about taking your business public? The same thing goes. The public wants to see that you are in bed with big names who can step in and help your company out of a tight spot and that you can co-op advertisements and promotional campaigns together.

Raising capital is easier when you are moving forward with establish partnerships to ease the weight of the load and stress that comes with a growing company.

For Corporate Consulting or Strategic Partners, call Princeton Corporate Solutions at 267-233-0183Take Your Company Public the easy way!

Life Insurance Coverage – Which Type Of Policy Is Suitable For You?

Quite a few individuals neglect receiving their life insurance coverage prepare in order. The reasons for that procrastination vary and can contain:

* I do not want to believe about dying
* It is as well puzzling.
* Do I really need it?
* Will I qualify?
* It is also expensive suitable now and not in the spending budget.

Although the market will disagree, the truth is that you will find instances inside your life whenever you most likely don’t want life insurance plan, but they are few, relative to the instances when its significant for that monetary perfectly getting of your loved ones. The numerous choices out there can make your head spin, and not all choices are easily understandable through the common individual out there. Do not be concerned: All the different plans could be demystified. Your agent might be a great resource. Pursuing is fundamental information you require to understand:

Straight life insurance plan can be called whole life or long term. Your premiums are set for life whenever you obtain the plan as is the death benefit. In general, the younger and healthier you might be whenever you obtain the policy reduce your premiums for the rest of your life.

As long as you pay the premium, your beneficiary will obtain the proceeds if you die. Straight life policies construct up money values you can borrow or withdraw if necessary, but this can decrease the amount that will be paid to your heirs, if it isn’t paid back. Annuities are a type of life insurance policy that not just includes a dying advantage, but may also create a stream of earnings for you when you are nonetheless living. You will discover various types of annuities, but you can find two simple types; fixed and variable.

A fixed annuity pays a fixed yield and has pre-determined payout to you when even now alive depending around the date that you annualize the policy and how quite a few many years the insurance policy company estimates you may stay to collect these payments. You also can elect to pay a fixed payment month-to-month in exchange for any fixed month-to-month advantage for the specified period of time.

A variable annuity operates in the comparable manner, but can potentially pay much much better advantages to you since your premiums are invested in the stock market, and possess the potential to make or lose money. Your actual month-to-month payout, ought to you decide to annualize is dependent on your success with your investments. You will discover also other options accessible with annuities, but you must speak with an agent for more explanation and discussion about regardless of whether or not this is really an excellent option for you.

Possibly one of the most well-known is expression life which is the least complicated to understand and is the most economical. Term life is for any specific expression (example 10 years), and will pay to your heirs only if you die in the course of the expression in the coverage. Young families can acquire a high amount of coverage relatively inexpensively to make sure that young children is going to be cared for in the case on the dying of one of the partners. Time period life doesn’t build money value. Burial insurance is self explanatory. It can be meant to pay funeral expenses.

Mortgage life is like phrase life but normally additional high-priced. The purpose would be to pay off the home loan in situation with the dying of one of the borrowers around the mortgage. The value declines at about the same rate as the home loan balance declines. Low-priced time period coverage, which retains a constant life amount via the period of the policy, can be a far better value. For additional certain data about what type of protection would be finest for your predicament, it really is constantly suggested that you simply do your own study, and obviously, check with an agent who can solution your questions.

Learn more about term life insurance definition. Stop by our site where you can find out all about family term life insurance and what it can do for you.

Need an OTCBB, Pink Sheets or Reverse Merger Consultant? Buyer Beware!

Private Placement Memorandum authoring and the process of taking one’s company public are services that require extensive experience and the ability to look at a deal objectively and peripherally to evaluate all the angles to enhance the ability of the client to achieve funding in a timely manner.

Many times, when I’m hired to structure a company before funding, they will be under the impression that my evaluation is a mere formality and they are ready to go. Often I’m the bearer of bad news when I have to break it to the client that their company has more holes than Swiss cheese and 30 to 60 days away from starting the fund raising process.

They will often get a second and then third opinion and usually run into the same thing before they eventually find their way back to our firm. As they call around to consulting firms they perpetually experience the ‘hard sell’ by firms who ‘need’ the business because they lack the rewards and referrals that come with cultivating each client relationship because they take on and spit out deals so fast they hardly remember their client’s name during the transaction.

This mentality dominates the larger firms because of their gargantuan overhead while the boutique firms can take a more personal approach because they have a steady flow of business and referrals because they are not stressed about bringing in the next big deal so they can meet payroll and keep their lights on. The smaller companies that focus on turnaround consulting, private placement memorandum authoring, top tier business plan writing and taking companies public usually take a one on one approach to the consulting process and will rarely pressure clients to sign on because their phone is ringing off the hook with previous clients who want to hire them for the next stage in the evolution of their company’s growth.

This business is all about relationships. Ditch the consultant that applies the high pressure sales tactics and seek out the smaller, more personalized groups that don’t ‘need’ your business but will cultivate and value it.

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

Corporate Fund Raisingl: PIPE, DPO, PPM, OTCBB, Pink Sheets or Reverse Mergers

There are many ways to use capital without using bank loans, lines of credit and other shady methods like shelf corps and bogus platform scams. If you are truly trying to raise capital for your company here are some simple breakdowns of your options with a quick definition for each one:

 PIPE: Private Investment In Public Equity this is used primarily by mutual funds and private investment firms where they buy discount stock in order to raise capital, there are two types of PIPEs traditional where common and preferred stock is issued at a set cap to raise money for the issuer and a structured pipe issues convertible debt.

 DPO: Direct Public Offering is when you sell equity shares directly to customers, suppliers and employees.

 PPM: Private Placement Memorandum is also known as an offering memorandum takes advantage of Regulation D rule exemptions 504, 505 and 506. This process came into existence with the’33 securities act and popularized in the late’80s, companies can raise money from the public via private placement; there is virtually zero interaction with the SEC after you file form d as long as you stay legal. (most popular form of fund raising).

 IPO: Initial Public Offering: extremely expensive, need SOX 404 audits, must have board of directors, quarterly financial reports to shareholders, report heavily to the SEC and 1 out of every 1000 companies that want an IPO actually qualify. I love participating in these but most companies just can’t qualify for one reason or the other.

 OTCBB: Over the Counter Bulletin Board is an electronic quote system that is the next best thing if you can’t go public via ipo, there is minimal red tape to startups and small businesses and is legitimized by the stringent ongoing reports to the SEC which keeps investor confidence high (these are extremely solid and I suggest this structure to companies when I am hired by their company or legal team as a consultant as a fast, easy way to raise big capital from the public otc)

 Pink Sheet: you can look at pink sheets as the Burger King, while the OTCBB is McDonalds, they are competing otc mechanisms. Pinks sheets are commonly referred to as penny stock and notorious for ‘pump em’ and dump em’ controversies and a lot of crooked people are involved with this platform. This is not a long term process that will allow one’s company to grow, pink sheets companies are typically short lived but it is cheap to set up but not a professional structure that could be upgraded in time to an IPO.

 Reverse Merger: a group funds the filing and creation of a public shell, they then sell that shell to a company that wants to go public, the established company merges it’s entity into the public shell. The sellers retain around 30% equity after they charge an upfront fee of 300k to 1m. 99% of reverse mergers are successful with the merger, but unsuccessful to bring them to trade and the entity basically just fizzles out.

Taking your company public is actually quite simple and inexpensive when you have the right consultant putting the structure together for you. There are countless ways to raise capital quickly and easily. It’s important that you understand your options before you waste time entering into the red tape infested banking system for a loan.

Want To Go Public With Your Company, call Princeton Corporate Solutions at 267-233-0183Take Your Company Public the easy way!

Take Your Business Public: Don’t Do Anything Until Your Read This!

Take Your Company Public: A Must Read Before You Do Anything! As a consultant in the business of structuring companies, setting up strategic alliances for clients, writing business plans and PPM’s and taking companies public on the OTCBB, I must admit I’ve seen my share of scams and swindling of uninformed clients. One sad issue that permeates the industry is clients who believe that their only option is to give up substantial equity while paying hefty fees to consultants who take your company public.

Here is the reality. When you are investigating the industry to find a consulting firm to work with to facilitate your ‘go public’ process, the first thing you need to do is make sure you are hiring a ‘turn-key’ solutions consulting group; meaning they need to offer everything soup to nuts in house because the second your consultant outsources anything, accountability is lost.

Next, on the issue of paying fees and also giving up equity, it should be either or, not both. If a company tells you that they want you to pay them in both upfront fees and in equity, you should laugh and walk away. In actuality the best deals for the client are those that are simply fee based, not equity based.

It’s better to pay 100k in a few easy installments than to pay millions in stock that will only be liquidated after the IPO which will completely obliterate your stock price and almost certainly ruin your company’s chances of success. It baffles me to see the scenarios that uninformed company owners accept. Currently there is a company that is promoting all over Google Adwords that they will take your company public for $25k and after a month of talking to the company, when you finally agree to use them they break the bad news that they are not going to charge you $25k or anything even close to that, they are, in fact, going to charge you $125k upfront, plus $10k to $20k for your initial SEC audit and on top of all of that they are going to take 30% of your company! It’s shocking but this group of consultants, because of their extensive advertising, has no problem bringing in clients and turning the tables on them at the last minute and sadly, because the client is uninformed, they accept the contract and pay the fees.

If you are going to give up any amount of equity in exchange for the process of going public, it should be with a licensed broker dealer and there should be zero out of pocket expenses from you. Your broker dealer should pay for the SEC audit, S-1 filing, SEC approval, FINRA approval, Symbol achievement and ongoing investor relations to keep your stock price solid. Unless your broker dealer is doing all of this, you need to find a new, full service broker.

Keep in mind, each consulting firm you talk to will give you a million reasons as to why their fee structure and process is the best but here are some comparable facts so that you can make the right decision on how to proceed. First of all, if you get an emotional consultant that acts like he is excited about your project and ‘can’t wait to get started’ this is bogus and you should walk away. The best consultants keep clients at arm’s length and never get emotional because it clouds the process and makes them ineffective. Besides, if they are acting so excited about your company it’s probably because they are trying to convince you of their legitimacy that won’t stand on its own merit.

Next you want to make sure that you are getting a quote on your specific company type which includes at a minimum: corporate structuring, strategic alliance facilitation, board of directors evaluation, business plan authoring built for IPO, investor finder service, SEC audit (the should be able to give you a general idea of the cost of the audit and have a company that you can use as most consultants don’t employ an auditor on staff), S-1 filing, SEC approval, FINRA approval, symbol achievement, market maker or broker dealer relationship/contract setup and investor relations for long term success.

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

Professional Indemnity Insurance Market News 2010

The market changes in the Insurance industry will have a particular impact for those professions who carry Professional Indemnity Insurance in Australia. 2009 saw the signs of a returning hard market in all areas of insurance with numerous losses reported and profitability being offset by modest premium increases in 2009, with more predicted in the coming years. A JP Morgan report indicates a return of the hard market with fewer insurers out there and increased claims hiking premiums for Professional Indemnity Insurance with increases unseen since the 2001 market debacle.

Some industry news have emphasized the opinion that insurers will be forced to return to profitability after years of losses and falling premiums as they tried to compete in a soft market with global competitors. In recent times, a leading insurer AIG changed their name due to a public relations fiasco, which involved millions in bonuses paid out to representatives in areas believed to have incurred over 160 billion dollars in losses.

Effects of a hard market can be mitigated in some measure by competition from global insurers however profitability is a mandatory in the current economic climate even for international insurers and significant increases are assured in areas such as Professional Indemnity Insurance.

Last December, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission approved new guidelines for the FOS and in January, they took effect. Prior to this, complainants were only able to access FOS services to a maximum of 280,000. In January, the limit was raised to 500,000 the limit is raised also for clients of insurance brokers up from 100,000 to a maximum of 500,000. In addition, interest and penalties could be added to award amounts.

Therefore, those who rely on Professional Indemnity Insurance could certainly see rate increases related not only to increased risks and to potentially more expensive awards, but also almost certainly in response to pressure to offset losses in other areas. Fewer insurers are willing to take the risk and step into potentially shaky fields and this is predicted to result in markedly higher premiums, insurance being harder to obtain, and in general the insurers taking a stance to lower risk and increase profitability.

These changes in the insurance field are said to be by some, a return to financial responsibility and profitability, though the impact on those required to have Personal Indemnity Insurance may be further financial hardships and a struggle to retain or achieve profitability in already financial shaky times.

Soon there will be evidence on whether the market changes and increased premiums will benefit all, though the falling premiums for all insurance over the last several years have put the insurance industry and many insurers in an uncertain position.

Industry analysts are remaining quiet about the exact rate professionals can expect to see over the next few years but there is a reduction in capacity expected as well as premium rates and increases of up to 30% has been speculated as a possibility for insurances including Professional Indemnity Insurance.

Buy Professional Indemnity Insurance Online. Compare prices from leading insurers in under 2 minutes. BizCover is the ONLY website where you can buy Professional Indemnity online instantly.

Take Your Company Public With A DPO (Direct Public Offering)

If you are considering going public you are coming from one of two positions: you are either coming from a position of liquidity where you have the capital to spend $200k to go public on the OTCBB or you are coming from a position of weakness and you don’t have liquidity.

For the former, going public is easy, find a consultant with a solid track record and take your company public, you’re ready to go. For those of you who are coming from a weakened position due to lack of capital you should strongly consider taking your company public with a DPO (direct public offering). Typically a DPO starts with a PPM (private placement memorandum) that breaks your company into shares and prepares it for the public eye. Form D is then filed and you’re then ready to start raising capital.

The only downside is, most companies have no one to invest in the PPM and their transaction is dead in the water. A DPO is an extremely powerful process which allows you to not only offer shares to your friends, family and professional contacts but you can also team up with an investor finder company that will contact their seed capital investor database to help you raise capital fast and easy if you are willing to sell seed stock at a discount before you go public.

Be prepared to pay a modest fee upfront as well as a small equity position as these investor finder services know full well that power that they possess with their database. If you successfully contract with a real, viable investor finder service, they will most likely want to be the consulting group that takes your company public as well. Be smart; sign on with them as they will have a vested interest in your success.

They will most likely communicate electronically with their database members via email. As interest by the investor group builds, you the company owner, will have to take over the closing as it is illegal for non licensed investor finder services to take over the closing and issuance of shares on behalf of your company.

Think of a DPO with an investor finder service as the golden tuna that can solve all of your problems in one swift movement. You can find these groups by going to your favorite search engine and typing in word combinations like “investor finder’” or “investor finder service”. You can team up with a solid investor finder service and they will take you all the way!

Want To Go Public With Your Company, call Princeton Corporate Solutions at 267-233-0183Take Your Company Public the easy way!

What Is A DPO (Direct Public Offering)?

A direct public offering is when a company raises capital by selling its shares directly to what is referred to as affinity groups, unlike an IPO which are sold by a broker dealer to its customers and the general public through other broker dealers who have customers interested in buying shares in the company.

In IPO’s you have a firm commitment underwriting, where the underwriters promise to purchase the securities for their own account if they can not sell them to customers.

Best-effort underwriting: The underwriters do not guarantee any specific number of shares to be sold, they merely act as brokers.

In an IPO the lead underwriter is referred to as the syndicate manager, he keeps the book and invites other broker dealers to join the syndicate. In a firm commitment underwriting, an underwriter’s agreement makes members liable for any unsold securities, regardless of how much of their allotment they sold. .

In a direct public offering the company sells the shares to affinity groups; who falls in this category? Customers, suppliers, distributors, friends, family, employees and other members of the community. In a direct public offering (DPO) the company places its shares in the hands of those people who are familiar with the company and know the company’s product and management, and are most likely to hold the shares longer because they feel comfortable with the company’s prospects for the future.

Direct public offerings are considerably less expensive than IPO’s and most effective for smaller offerings, for large offerings the sales staff and customer base of a broker dealer are usually necessary.

Since the affinity group is already familiar with the company and its practices it doesn’t put pressure on the company to change the way it does business, and will remain loyal to the company because of it’s presence in the community.

DPO’s are preferable to venture capital financing because it allows the present management to execute its business plan without outside interference. When a small company turns to a single large investor they tend to surrender the freedom to make all the decisions.

In a DPO like other methods of going public today audited financial statements are required. Unlike a reverse merger you choose your shareholders and you don’t have to deal with shady, unscrupulous shell owners.

Shell owners usually keep between 5-15% of the shares outstanding and are quick to liquidate, and they do not have an interest in the well being of the company’s share price. Even if you insert a stipulation in the contract that they can not sell for a year they will find a way of shorting the stock and destroying the share price.

This makes the DPO a preferable option even for companies that don’t need financing but would like to go public.

A DPO does not always require audited financials but if you plan on going public you will need them. So you must hire an auditing firm that is “peer review” or PCAOB.

If you wish to take your company public then you must file a form S-1 with the Securities and Exchange Commission and a form 211 must be filed with FINRA.

A DPO is an alternative to an IPO or Reverse Merger for a company wishing to go public or obtain financing; it allows the company owner(s) to call the shots instead of an underwriter or a shell owner.

Take Your Company Public, call Princeton Corporate Solutions at 267-233-0183Take Your Company Public the easy way!

How To Go Public: The Process

Becoming a publicly traded company is an exciting and rewarding experience. The following sets forth the method, steps, fees and estimated timetable to go public on the OTC Bulletin Board (OTCBB) ‘from scratch’, or through a self-filing and discusses the 1934 Exchange Act responsibilities after a company’s registration statement has gone effective (after the company has become publicly traded):

Prior to filing the registration statement, a company that wishes to go public must first obtain an audit of the Company’s financial statements for the past two fiscal years. For most companies, the financial audit can be completed in about a month and costs typically range between $5,000 and $25,000, depending on the complexity of the company financials.

A public company will also need shareholders. To that end, if additional shareholders are needed, the company going public will need to complete a self-underwritten Regulation D, Rule 506 offering in which the company sells shares of its stock to investors for real consideration. This is not a difficult task, so long as you have a properly prepared private placement memorandum (PPM) and you follow the relatively simple rules of Rule 506. The price per share and number of shares offered can be determined by the Company, but most registered broker-dealers that will eventually submit a Form 211 for an OTC Bulletin Board quotation prefer to have a minimum of 400,000 shares distributed among the investors.

In addition to the minimum number of shareholders requirement, a company must have free-trading shares, called the ‘float’, in order to go public. Upon completion of the private offering and the financial audit for the prior two fiscal years, an S-1 Registration Statement must be filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) to register the shares sold in the private placement, thus creating the free trading shares. The completion of the S-1 process with the SEC will make the Company a 1934 Exchange Act reporting company, which is required in order to obtain a quotation on the OTC Bulletin Board. The SEC will review the S-1 and provide comments within 30 days from the filing date. Comments from the SEC typically relate to the terms of the offering, the Company’s business and its financial statements. It usually takes between 2 to 3 months for the SEC to approve a registration statement on Form S-1 and for the S-1 to become effective. However, the actual amount of time will depend on the level of review and number of comments given by the SEC and the corresponding response time by the Company in filing its amendments.

Shortly after filing the S-1 registration statement with the SEC, a market maker must be ‘engaged’ to file a Form 211 application with FINRA for the purposes of obtaining a quotation of its common shares on the OTC Bulletin Board. It is important to note that market makers cannot receive compensation for making a market in a stock, thus typically you must have connections to accomplish this. The timetable for approval of the Form 211 process is approximately 3 weeks to 5 weeks. However, the Form 211 will not be approved until the S-1 is approved by the SEC since the approval of the S-1 provides the “free trading” shares necessary to obtain the OTC Bulletin Board quotation.

The completion of the entire process to become a public company typically takes approximately 3 to 4 months from completion of the private offering and financial audit, however, the actual time could vary based on the factors discussed herein. If done right, with planning, hard work, the proper foresight, and a good firm guiding you through the process, going public is a truly exciting and rewarding experience.

Take Your Company Public, call Princeton Corporate Solutions at 267-233-0183Take Your Company Public the easy way!

The Anatomy of A Business Plan

With legions of halfwit, template loving business plan wannabe writers polluting the web it’s no mystery that companies are having a tough time getting funding. It use to be that when a company was ready to get down to business for serious expansion they would call a consultant that would help them bring all the pieces together in a strategic fashion and then this consultant would take their extended industry knowledge in combination with the unique concepts of the client’s business and he would author a business plan.

This business plan would include everything that the venture capital firms, angel investors, private investors and institutional lenders would need in order to make a quick, no nonsense decision about whether to fund the company and how much equity they would get in return.

Today with the cancerous cloud of predatory consultants seeking out startup business prey to suck dry that businesses are too broke and exhausted to move forward with a solid consultant after they have been through the costly obstacle course and fun house of mirrors set up by wannabe consultants who reel in their prey with a few big words and industry terms and at the end of the day, they are going to put your business plan together with some cracked template software that spits out overly generalized business plans that receive laughs and snickers before being tossed in the trash by investors and venture capital firms.

If you want a real business plan, call a consultant that is completely submerged in the venture capital industry and has experience with plugging businesses into the capital machine. An consultant will first give you a consultation so he can assist in any corporate structuring or turnaround issues that need attention before the business plan is together. After the company’s structure is complete with executives, solid management, strategic partners, advisory board and board of directors, there is still one more thing to do before the business plan. You must decide what mechanism you’re going to use to raise capital. Are you seeking debt or equity investment or both, how much equity you will give away for the amount of cash you’re seeking. How many shares does your corporation currently have and so on. You’ll most likely need to put together a private placement or consider taking your company public on the otcbb. After all this is done then it’s time to write the business plan.

Don’t shoot yourself in the foot, don’t write the business plan yourself, when you’ve found a consultant, here are the topics that should be covered in the business plan (this knowledge will help you audit their work before you even hire them). The table of contents should read, at a minimum, like this: executive summary with objectives, keys to success and strategic advantages; Market, Market: Growth and Development Analysis with Industry Analysis and Location Based Services; Current company position with Company overview and vision, key successes to date, technical achievements and commercial position, include info about your technology platform. Talk about your management team, product and services offering, competition, market entry/ Five Forces Analysis, barriers to market entry, comparable business model, target market needs, target market characteristics, market demand drivers, PEST analysis, SWOT analysis, marketing implementation and strategy overview and tactical components, process development map, financial model and projections.

There you have it, the process to follow before the business plan is written and the concepts to be covered in the business plan so that you get the attention you need from investors and the money you deserve for your business.

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