When the principles of a company make the decision to go public there are many things to take into consideration. First and foremost, trying to wade through the pariah infested waters of the OTCBB, Investor Relations and strategic growth strategies on your own is a guaranteed suicide mission and you’ll fail. Find a consultant who understands your business and has the contacts to create a turnkey solution to take you from public to private and all the other necessities you’re company is going to need to make it.
As part of your consultant pre qualifications here are the niches you’re the consultant absolutely must be well versed in order for your company to succeed with the public offering and a solid trading volume post public. Better yet, here is what you’re going to need so you can measure your questions against this list when qualifying the consultants to see who is the best fit.
First you’re company will need structuring. What I mean by structuring is that you’ll need to put a sturdy skeletal structure together to carry around your corporate bag of bones, an iron clad skeletal structure would consist of: board of directors with esteemed educational and professional pedigrees and proven track records for assisting companies in your particular genre with getting to the next level from the level your company is currently at pre public. You also need powerful strategic alliances that will increase your name recognition and overall market awareness by affiliations with inter-industry powerhouses. Use strategic partners for promotion, expansion, resellers, referrals, service and product brokering, name recognition, and more.
Talk to your accountant about your corporate structure. Delaware C corporations are a sturdy home state for public companies as the states statutes go back to the original 13 colonies and offer optimal protection and case law to support a growing public company. Some oversees companies prefer Nevada for their quick fix to the foreign owned company problem but ask your accountant and attorney to give you the pros and cons. Statutory domicile will be the advantage to the home of your corporation but if you are operating in another state you’ll still need to file locally while the state of incorporation can offer legislative support from previous case law history. Don’t believe that you won’t have to pay taxes if you incorporate in Nevada, this simply isn’t the case. Read up on this and then get the real deal from your attorney.
Every public company needs solid CEO, CFO, COO, Board of directors, Board of Advisors, Strategic Partnerships to start off. Now, when you have the above you need to start working on monetize-able purchase orders and offering net terms to your clients, in other words start building your book of business aggressively by offering credit terms. This will make you a stronger company and when investors see your mountain of purchase orders they’ll be impressed and will be more apt to invest. General signed contracts will typically have too many contingencies to have an impact as contracts are not very enforceable whereas purchase orders are like currency and can be monetized if your company finds itself in a crunch. This shows investors that you’re prepared for the ups and downs ahead.
Now after you’ve gone through the s1 comments with the SEC and the 15c211 has been filed by a market maker with FINRA, let’s assume you have your trading symbol and you’re ready to start selling shares. You are going to need a powerful, expensive, rock solid investor relations and market build strategy. Don’t use a pump and dump house as if you do so you will never recuperate. Instead your IR strategy should include: phone room support for announcing your company to industry insiders to create awareness (not selling stock), solid, opt-in email alerts to seasoned, accredited investors looking for stock in your industry, press releases should go out to announce everything from a new executive hire to an new contract to a new strategic partner and anything else that will give you a reason to notify the public on your company’s growth. Expert panel reviews for your C level executives to talk about the industry as an expert insider promote the company to the masses where they will get to see first hand the massive knowledge you possess about your industry which may prompt listeners to investigate your stock for a potential purchase. Don’t forget about viral publicity through high pr video, social bookmarks, blog entry, articles and the prototypical twitter, facebook, myspace and Linkedin properties.
Going public should be part of an overall strategy for expansion as opposed to having a go to just ‘go public’ to raise money.
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