Companies decide to go public for many different reasons: expansion, need for capital, exit strategy, acquisition facilitation, globalization etc. But what are the real advantages to going public? First, let’s go over the disadvantages. Your life becomes an open book and as an executive your spending habits and failures will be a matter of public information with your annual and quarterly filings.

You’ll be accountable to shareholders. You’ll have a board whose main interest is the company and the shareholders no you or your need for a new luxury car, financial bonus or need for a quick loan from the company that was once possible and easy when your company was a sole proprietor entity. You need trading volume and without it your stock is worthless and your company becomes a blind, deaf, mute, quadriplegic (a bit extreme but you get the point).

The advantages are numerous if your company is ready for the public realm. With a solid trading volume, minimal dilution of stock, solid executive management, an active board of directors, powerful strategic alliances and the ongoing advisory of a strategies consultant your company can expand globally, identify and grow through acquisition and subsidiary mergers, purchase entities and services with stock to retain cash flow.

Banks and other institutional lenders will make more funding solutions available. Your exit strategy is built in and turn-key.

The most successful public companies have a few common themes built into their infrastructure. They have recruited a proven and tested CEO, CFO and COO with professional pedigrees and track records that are recognized in the industry and media and will bring with them a strong following of partners and solution mechanisms that will typically yield instantaneous, empirical results on behalf of the company. The board of directors is restructured so that major industry enhancing components are represented such as industry niche legal, financial, distribution, domestic and international. Each of these board members will put their contact portfolio to work for your company for immediate and long term growth and stabilization. One other aspect that all prosperous public entities have is a strategies consultant that keeps everything in line. This individual is also what is referred to as a ‘fixer’.

This professional will typically stand in the background constantly analyzing every aspect of the company for weak points and correct them. Whether it be a lazy board member, potential acquisition, CEO not pulling his/her weight, potential legal issues etc., this strategist has a keen eye and typically a massive contact base that, when put into place can correct virtually any situation quickly and seamlessly.

Going public is a great strategy for the right organization. Having all your ducks in a row pre and post public is the key to a successful offering and public markets longevity.

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So, you’re thinking about going public and your company is too small to get an investment banking underwriter so you decide to take the bull by the horns and hire a consultant that can help you with a direct filing. You call the first guy you see advertising on Ad-words, he’s got a nifty site with all the up to date jargon and besides, he’s on the internet, he must be legit!

You call him and he’s gaga over your business. He loves what you do and thinks you’re the tops! Only problem is, you never told him about your business model, annual revenues, infrastructure or anything else that a seasoned facilitator will ask before they talk about anything even remotely close to going public. Before you can ask him questions that may challenge his comprehension of the industry or actual full service capacity, he mentions merging your company into a ‘public shell’ and having a trading symbol ins 3 months.

This statement stops you in your tracks, ’3 months?’ you say in bewildered awe. You’re salivating, begging him to part with more insider information that will help you achieve your goal in a fraction of the time and minimal expense. Then you hear the term ‘Pink Sheets’. I promise you that the next thing to come out of this self-proclaimed guru’s mouth will be a fee structure in the range of $250k to $500k. At this point, you should walk but you’re glued to the phone, your legs are paralyzed and you are about to fall for the biggest scam in the ‘going public’ industry. Get comfortable and buckle in, because this three month ride is going to last for a year before you find that you have inherited a useless shell on the Pinks with a stock value of .00001 cents per share and it will take an investor relations/road show equivalent to an act of God to make this stock even a .02 cent stock with a daily trading volume of, um well, how many shares can your mother buy so you don’t feel too bad?

I got an email from another ‘established’, ‘creme de la creme’ consultant with ’17′ years in the industry and blah, blah, blah. I get spam like this daily, hourly in fact. It only took one phone call to find out that these guys just started out less than three months ago, charged $300k for their Pink Sheet shells and were selling MTN and BG platform scams before that. They had never taken a company public, put a company through an IR strategy, evaluated a corporation for public acceptance as a public company or even heard of a PCAOB audit or S1.

It turns my stomach to think that jerks like this are popping up like hives on a nervous criminal’s neck but hey, live and learn. If you want to go public, look into a solid direct S1 filing, if you are in a rush and are a solid and profitable company, there are ways to merge into a public shell legitimately and have an amazing public existence with absolute profitability, but only chumps pay premium rates for a shell. The key is to sell your story to a ‘real’ consulting or strategies firm that will invest in your company so you don’t have to put up a dime. They will pay all the fees for going public or facilitating a reverse merger into a squeaky clean shell and pound the pavement with you post public to make sure that you’re trading at a steady volume and at the right price per share.

Learn more about Taking Your Company Public. Find out how to Raise Capital Fast by taking your company public

There is a huge gap between a public company that is exists and thrives. An company that is merely existing has a stock price that is is stabilized by constant promotion and fund raising with every bell and whistle, warrant and promotional gimmick as the company’s business model is not conducive to inner and outer expansion, globalization or general scalability.

The public company that thrives will have an IPO that is both promotional and informative and will show a clear cut and active plan for growth via acquisitions, mergers and both domestic and international alliances. Public companies that thrive will have a team of consultants making introductions, setting up round table meet and greets to introduce and build rapport with funding players and potential partners where there is a strong synergy. The share price for the ‘thriving’ company will be triggered naturally by press releases in combination with promotion to investors by updating current and potential shareholders of these benchmark achievements.

Another massive element that is all together ignored 99% of the companies out there, even thriving public and private entities is the almighty legislative tie-in. Get to know your congressman, senator and all their affiliated groups. Become a permanent fixture at their fundraising events and look for angles that would help create a win/win situation for your political counterpart when his activity wanders into your particular business genre. Offer to consult with them to help them navigate the tepid waters of your industry without making the amateur mistakes of those not completely submerged in the industry. Be their industry expert, adviser then publicize your efforts in a way that helps both you and your political alliance.

Globally there are, maybe four or five consulting firms that specialize in the above. A full service, turn-key solution facilitating merger and acquisition identification and facilitation, all aspects and angles of investor relations, globalization and alliance identification and facilitation, professional executive placement into your organization, powerful board of director facilitation and more.

Though the above may sound like the consultants lack focus, to the contrary they are extremely focused and are well versed in walking into an organization and mapping the structure. What are the weak points and what are the strong points? And then they put together a strategy to build the structure that will gain rapid traction that will stick with expansion and funding benchmarks that are realistic, scalable and achievable. Taking a company public in today’s economic environment is fickle and impossible for the untested to succeed. Find a consultant to put together a team that will launch or maintain your corporate stabilization and expansion strategy properly.

Let’s change directions for a moment. If you are a seasoned investor looking to diversify, here are some guidelines that will help you find the best deals.

Investing in an IPO traditionally offers higher yields and a Pre IPO can offer 200%+ returns if the structure is solid. By structure I am referring to founders, C Level executives, board of directors, compliance legal team, pipeline contracts, overall profitability and dilution in the float (just to name a few items). Finding the right transaction takes more than just some advice from your broker, though their efforts may be pure in intent, they are, for the most part, unqualified to advise on such investment actions.

Unless your investment advisor is a strategies and structuring consultant with a ton of experience in globalization, they may be licensed to sell you securities but they are not qualified to strip an opportunity to the bone and reconstruct it looking for errors or chinks in the armor to justify a solid transaction or a pump and dump pipe dream.

Most brokers make a tremendous effort to evolve out of the burnout genre of pitching and selling stock and more toward mergers and acquisitions where the real money is. Part of M & A is merging private companies into public entities, restructuring the company, stock and management and then turning out the entity with a new symbol and price and pounding the pavement with multiple genres of IR simultaneously. Selling shareholders who invested in the Pre IPO phase of the company will create the float and make the quickest returns with minimal risk as they will typically buy their shares at a deep discount to the retail price. Next, with a controlled incline of the stock price the investors who buy at the road show outings will make nice chunks of change and may receive some type of warrants.

Using online mechanisms for stock promotion such as social media, webinars, opt in email, banners and other white hat processes will assist with daily volume. Phone room buzz generation materialized by phone rooms calling around and introducing the company and it’s stock symbol to investors and market makers allows for eyes to be focused on the company and in return will result in both short term and long term investors. Then you have the road show which are also referred to as ’round table’ meetings. I’m not talking about the free suppers in Manhattan for free loaders and wannabe’s; I mean a targeted audience of 15 to 20 tops, investors who are ready to listen, ask questions and buy.

If you are considering investing in a Pre IPO, make sure that the company has a clear cut plan for all the above promotion. If the company structure is sound and the promotional element is there, chances are it’s a safe bet for the short term. Legislative contacts, globalization, board member alliance facilitation and a professional C level staff will be the critical factor to take the company toward long term success. Before making an investment of any kind consult a licensed professional.

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I deal with S1 attorneys all day every day and most of them are entrepreneurial, hard working and interested in helping you in any way they can but there are also a lot of bad ones out there. If you are taking your company public the last thing you want is a broke as a joke s1 filing agent.

I recently had the misfortune of working with (for a very short time I might add) a New Jersey lawyer who had us all convinced by her pepper gray hair and fluency of legal jargon as a second language and quick calls to what she had us convinced where big shot investors who had millions to put into this and other transactions we brought her way.

During initial negotiations she and I sat down in a coffee shop and went over her equity position and fees in the transactions that she’d be working on for us and it was pretty simple and straight forward. I would have my team organize and structure the company and transaction and she would simply file the s1 in exchange for 2% to 3% equity. Pretty nice payday for minimal work and gaining equity in an average company producing $5m+ per year.

Ah yes, but when it sounds too good to be true it is and when it seems too easy of a negotiation…it is! When she sent us the contract she felt the need to add a few percentage points to the tune of 7%, making a total of 10% equity and she also was charging an extra $10k to fill in the blanks on your prototypical PPM doc. Why did she jack up the price? Her response was, “This S1 will have comments”. I almost died laughing. Of course it’s going to have comments with the SEC, that’s why it’s called the ‘comments’ stage.

We talked her into taking 2 payments for the $10k, half upfront and half on completion but we really should have dumped her right there. She didn’t want to keep her word on that either so I paid her the last payment before the fee was due and just got rid of her.

Turns out she never filed an s1 before and her whole act was a sham. She was desperate for cash and nickled and dimed us the whole time. I laugh about it now but it wasn’t funny when it happened. We lost over a month of transaction time because she couldn’t tell the truth.

The client was going public on the OTCBB with a valuation of around $5m, her suggestion was to raise capital pre public for $1 per share because the company would have a hard time qualifying for the NASDAQ if it started at anything less than $1. This company was years away from even considering the NASDAQ as an option but her in experience and need to prolong the deal to rape us for fees was so blatant and careless that she did everything she could to add as much confusion to the deal as possible so that no one knew what was going on, therefore she got away with a lot and was able to pick our pockets for weeks before we got rid of her.

The moral of the story is this: not all attorneys are rich. The truth is, most are very modest as far as their earnings. There is too much competition these days so there are predatory lawyers out there that will lie, double talk, triple talk and run you around in circles. All the while the clock is ticking and they are billing you like it’s going out of style. Watch your back with the dead broke S1 lawyer.

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