2021 - Become Investible

03 November

CinemaOne – From Idea to IPO with Brian and Ingrid Jahra

by Kevin Valley 0 Comments

Founding team Brian and Ingrid Jahra discuss the evolution of CinemaONE, the Caribbean’s first IMAX experience, the pioneering step of becoming the first SME IPO in T&T, and the challenges of building a sustainable, wealth-generating business, while also focusing on future growth and possibilities.

In this conversation, we unpacked:

Importance of the IPO for SMEs
How to get to the IPO? What Is the Process?
What the Business Valuation process entails
Marketing the IPO
Evolution of CinemaOne
Growth of the Brand/Success Story
How to Develop the Customer Experience

Links:

CinemaONE Website

Cine1 on the Trinidad and Tobago Stock Exchange

14 September

Capital RaisingFeatureFinance

Total Convenience Management (TCM) with Robert Visser

by Kevin Valley 0 Comments

At one point or another, we’ve all experienced the great inconvenience of car troubles.

From car accidents to a blown tire or stalled battery – each one of these scenarios can seriously change the course of your day…right? So how do you turn this everyday occurrence into a multimillion-dollar business? In this “Become Investible” feature, we take a closer look at Total Convenience Management Ltd… from a startup leasing and rental company to the group of companies it manages to date.

Total Convenience Management Ltd, or TCM, serves the Caribbean as one of the largest providers in roadside assistance, leasing and rentals, GPS, executive transport, and vehicle concierge services. As the slogan boasts it’s your Plan A! Everyday…

To say this group of companies started from humble beginnings is by no measure, a false account. TCM began its journey with three employees and has grown from strength to strength bolstering a whole new industry based on the demands of a growing nation. Its home base Trinidad and Tobago is the largest importer of motor vehicles in the Caribbean. This presented the perfect platform for founder Kirk Waithe, and his partner Robert Visser to groom their start-up vehicle concierge and leasing service.

The journey began with a chance encounter between Kirk and Robert, where the two, with a like-minded approach to customer service, decided to join forces on the company’s biggest project to date; BPTT. At that time, BPTT required services for both its internal and external fleet- a project Waithe knew he could not handle on his own. And so, he put Robert Visser to the test. This project formed the partnership behind TCM’s success.

Every business has the potential to “become investible” – TCM grew its company through understanding the demand for their services and continuing to push the envelope in satisfying its customers. TCM is only one of many stories found right here in the Caribbean.

14 April

BusinessCapital Raising

How to Become Investible through Succession Planning

by Kevin Valley 0 Comments

Can your business survive without you?

This question is considered by many business owners as their business grows, transitioning from a small to medium-sized business.

The owner may be itching to move on to the next new venture, or, after working non-stop for years, they are looking for an opportunity to step away, take a break, or focus on other aspects of their life while the business works for them.

It can be challenging to remove yourself from the day-to-day operations of a business, but the benefits include more freedom to create and focus on other parts of the business rather than micromanaging all aspects of the daily grind.

To set the business up to work for you, it must be able to scale and grow. Efficient and profitable business scalability is all about increasing output while keeping costs low. Systems and processes must be in place to support the scaling, which includes the processes around the people in the business:

Manage Your Ego
Hire the Right Team – Keep Your Values in Mind
Set Your Team Up for Success – Onboard Thoroughly and Train Consistently
Retain the Value of Senior Team Members – Empower through Autonomy
Develop a Strategy for Succession Planning

Manage Your Ego

Founding and growing a business comes with a lot of passion and many times, ego. The business becomes part of you – like a child that you have birthed, raised, and trained. Owners often struggle to release control of their business and fear what will happen if they loosen the reins and step away from the business.

“The business cannot survive without me. If I leave, it will fall apart.”

That is the ego talking. If you are working to build a sustainable business or if you are trying to raise investment, that ego speak will put you at risk.

For investors, reliance on one person to keep a business running is a significant risk. If the systems and processes are not in place to keep the business running successfully even if the founder steps away or cannot continue running the company day to day, it shows that the business is not focused on long-term growth.

What must you as a business owner do to ensure that your business is strong enough to survive your departure?

Pick the right team, train them well, give them autonomy, and be clear on your succession plans.

Hire the Right Team – Keep Your Values in Mind

Your company’s values are the pillars your company is built on and should guide all decisions, including, importantly, who you choose to join your team.

Develop a human resources strategy that is aligned with your overall business strategy and goals. Rely on that to build your team systematically. Once team members with critical skills required to execute or provide the product or service are present, this can increase the company’s likelihood of success.

Your HR strategy should include information on legal requirements, employee engagement, career advancement, corporate image, and performance management. A key part of this human resources strategy is the process of adding people to your team, and what you do when they start.

How can you ensure that new employees feel motivated to work for the success of the company? Onboard them properly and train them well.

Set Your Team Up for Success – Onboard Thoroughly and Train Consistently

Without proper onboarding and training, new hires are left to sink or swim. If not properly supported when starting out, employees may move on more quickly, resulting in wasted resources in repeated recruitment.

To encourage employees who are committed to the growth of the company, develop programs that allow new hires to quickly adapt to and execute both company-wide and job-specific requirements. This encourages employees to become familiar with the overall operations of the company and helps them to understand how their role fits into and adds value to that structure. Share documented workflows and processes of current employees as reference points and as training tools.

Keep in mind that even existing employees, especially those who are strong, driven, and goal-oriented, will not stay with a company that is not offering training opportunities and showing paths for growth and development. Not investing in employees can negatively impact the company’s growth. Put time and money into the human capital which makes your business run.

Retain the Value of Senior Team Members – Empower through Autonomy

Once you have identified and developed the skills of team members, then you are set to take the step to reduce the reliance on the founder or CEO in the day-to-day operational activities. This starts by building leaders and empowering them to act independently.

Build confidence and autonomy in your leadership team to create a pool of potential successors. Avoid constantly vetoing and second-guessing their decisions as that undermines their authority, autonomy, and sense of shared ownership.

Develop a Strategy for Succession Planning

What happens to my business when I am gone?

Effective succession planning requires proactive knowledge transfer which will enable your business to capture the skills and competencies of departing employees so that the right successors can be selected and groomed for a smooth transition.

Without succession planning, your business could be at risk when employees and leaders retire or move on.

Think critically about the direction in which you want your business to grow. Identify the key positions needed for your company to operate and grow effectively. Develop strategies for grooming leaders who can run the business in line with the strategic direction of the business. Outline the plans for career advancement and mentorship for eventual successors.

To set your business up to survive when you are gone, address and identify gaps early, choose and train the right people, and understand that your company surviving without you is a sign of the company’s strength, and is the reflection of the strong leader who created the structures.

For more information on how to build an investible business that is set up for long-term success and scalability, send an email to kevin.valley@becomeinvestible.com or zahra.alleyne@becomeinvestible.com.

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03 March

Business ValuationCapital Raising

Mistakes Companies Make When Trying to Raise Capital

by Kevin Valley 0 Comments

Mistakes Companies Make When Trying to Raise Capital

13 January

Business ValuationCapital Raising

The Wrong Funding Decision Can Destroy the Value of Your Business

by Kevin Valley 0 Comments

The Wrong Funding Decision Can Destroy the Value of Your Business

13 January

Capital Raising

How to De-Risk Your Startup for Investors

by Kevin Valley 0 Comments

How to De-Risk Your Startup for Investors

13 January

Capital Raising

Failing to Raise Money Can be the Greatest Thing That Ever Happened

by Kevin Valley 0 Comments

Every business starts with an idea. Even the greatest idea can remain undeveloped without the money to make it happen.

If you have ever taken the time to develop a business plan, perfect your pitch, and deliver it to investors, there is only one desired outcome: to win the investment.

I started off my career on the investor side of the table, working with RBC as an equity analyst.

This lesson, though, comes from my first time I took off my investor hat and donned the cap of a tech entrepreneur, which taught me something unexpected.

At the time, I had been an analyst covering the international technology sector for four years, a fitting step for me as I had been obsessed with technology since I taught myself to touch-type on my father’s Macintosh computer when I was 12. I understood how the sector worked and moved, loved how technology could so drastically change an industry and give innovative businesses an advantage.

One Friday night (April 12, 2013, to be exact) I had just turned off the light to go to bed when I heard the familiar ping of a LinkedIn notification. I received a message which would open the door to an unfamiliar but exciting opportunity.

“Social app & Website idea”

For privacy reasons we will refer to the sender as “Jack”. In that exchange on LinkedIn, he pitched me on the idea of working together to create mobile apps that were unique and superior to what was already in the market.

We met at a coffee shop after work the following Monday to hash it out. I wanted to see where his head was at with these ideas and was left completely mind blown! Jack knew so much about mobile applications, the intricate differences between them. that You could tell that he had been studying them to a level of complete obsession.

Based on my line of work, I could clearly see the business case for it. Every week, when updating my industry research, I would read about large tech companies purchasing startups and niche/vertical app services for tens and hundreds of millions of dollars. I believed this could be that kind of startup, so I was on board.

For the next 5 weeks, Jack and I worked assiduously planning and conceptualizing our app ideas. It was one of the most exhilarating times of my life – I felt free, in control, and I felt an enhanced sense of purpose. I had gone from studying theory to actually living it, and I was completely focused.

We arrived at two app ideas that we decided to move forward with:

A beautiful photo and video sharing social platform to encourage users to share images and visual discoveries from anywhere in the world, curated in an organized and user-friendly manner. Mind you, this was 2013 before Instagram became Instagram and people were using hashtags #ForHashtagSake.

A social and talent networking platform where users who have creative, athletic, or disciplinary talents (think martial arts) can display those talents and have them reviewed by other users and even talent recruiters. Think LinkedIn meets YouTube in a seamless and curated manner.

Our business plans were ready, the industry research was covered, and we had quotations from a top app developer in San Francisco. Now, by profession, Jack was a telecoms guy, and I was a finance guy. We both loved technology but neither of us had any software programming experience. We wanted these apps to be top-notch and world-class, so we found a company in San Francisco – the Capital of Innovative Tech.

This company had a track record of developing apps for customers like Sony, Samsung, UBER, TOYOTA, Huawei, and T-Mobile just to name a few, so we knew we were in good hands. Their price tag, however, was around $700,000 to develop both apps for Apple and Android. Neither Jack nor I had that kind of money available, so we needed an investment to get started.

I set up a meeting with a friendly investment banking boutique firm to see if there was any interest. I may not have been a software developer, but finance I understood well. I knew the questions the firm would ask, and we prepared accordingly.

The meeting went quite well, I gave an overview of our app ideas and the existing industry trends including prices paid for app startups and niches (verticals). We had already received copies of the business plans from the software developers a couple of days prior, and Jack walked the investors through the details just as meticulously as he had done with me the first time we met.

We were seeking an investment of 1 million dollars to fund the development of the apps, operating costs, and updates. In exchange, we were offering a 25% equity ownership stake in our company.

Can you guess how much capital the firm offered us? Zero dollars!

They turned us down.

Failure to Fund: My Greatest Lesson

I was baffled. My stomach sank. We had done all the research, we crafted an impressive business plan, and we found the perfect firm to partner with to bring our business plan to life. So, what happened?

What I learned from this experience is why I have since dedicated a significant part of my professional career to educating entrepreneurs on how to Become Investible.

The reason that the investors refused to invest, even though we had a well-conceived plan and the passion to succeed is that our business was simply TOO RISKY. In preparing our pitch, we had neglected to emphasize how we would de-risk our business, which would therefore de-risk their investment. Since neither Jack nor I could code, we would be dependent on an external third-party to deliver our product. If that company went under, or did not produce what we wanted, the investment could easily be lost as we would not be able to produce the product on our own.

No one who pitches to investors thinks they are going to lose their money. People start businesses to make money, but to make investors comfortable you must show how investing in your business is not a major risk.

In the next article, I will explain exactly how you do that, with some more insight as to why Jack and I received no investment. For now, here are the main pointers to get you started to reduce your investment risk: