Early Stage Startup Funding
“Armed us with all the key financial tools needed to communicate our business plan and successfully secured the necessary funds for us to unlock the next phase of our growth.”
— Maya Rodricks, Co-founder of Ding Dong Dim Sum
Securing funds for your startup doesn’t need to be hard. Let us show you how.
Whether you’re looking to get a business loan, access any business grants or raise equity we have the expertise to help navigate you through the early stage financing landscape.
We do this by helping you:
formulate a realistic business plan supported with a robust financial model (monthly cash flow, profit & loss and balance sheet forecast built using excel);
understand every financing option available to you and introduce you to relevant lenders and investors;
manage all aspects of your funding campaign from launch to completion. This includes everything from tailoring pitch decks for each lender or investor, negotiating term sheets to managing any Crowdfunding campaign on platforms such as Seedrs and Crowdcube.
We will be your ‘Virtual CFO’ saving you precious time and avoidable mistakes when it comes to funding your growth plans.
Our Approach
Step 1: Understand your business requirements
Before we dive into the detail and get going, we first meet to understand your business, vision, and proposed funding requirements, to ensure we’re the perfect match to support you in achieving your growth ambitions. At this stage, you’ll get to know our team of experts, exactly what you need to be successful and how we can save you time and resources.
Step 2: Get your business plan into shape
As soon as we’ve agreed to move forwards, we get straight to work on developing the critical elements of your business plan. Whilst you, as the entrepreneur, are best person to author your business plan, our skills are best served by advising you as follows:
i) Critically evaluate your existing business plan and forecasts to ensure it meets any lender or investor due diligence requirements. If you have not written your plan yet, we will help construct this for you.
ii) Source any additional information needed to strengthen your business proposition and purpose by adding verified market and macroeconomic research.
iii) Determine an exact cash funding requirement for your next 18 months runway as well as your mid term 3 to 5 year requirement. We do this by building an integrated financial model based on your detailed assumptions, historical financial information and benchmarking this against relevant industry intel.
These steps will ensure you’re in the best position before approaching any funder. With our extensive experience in raising finance for our clients, we know exactly what funders are looking for, what piques their interest and how to keep them engaged, so we’ll support you in creating the highest-quality investment or lender-ready professional packs before launching any funding campaign. This will include a business plan, a pitch deck and any ancillary documents/evidence to verify your plan and will be required by any funder for due diligence purposes.
Step 3: Raise finance
Once we have a clear understanding of your funding requirements, we will also advise you on what financing options are available to you whether that is a business loan, applying for relevant grants or raising equity investment directly from private investors, a public campaign online, or both.
We will agree with you the best financing route you are comfortable taking and then start to execute and bring your funding strategy to life.
We will introduce you to a network of like-minded people and investors, particularly if you’re looking to secure a lead investor before you turn to “the crowd” and will also offer you short or long-term funding options from lenders and other providers.
Contact us for an initial discussion to discuss what options may be available to your business.
Contact us
Please complete this short form if you would like to have a complimentary, confidential consultation.
FAQs
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Raising finance in this context is related to the specific purpose of securing funding for your business. This could be for a variety of reasons, including to acquire another business, for a particular growth project, to complete a management buyout (MBO) or to complete a management buy-in (MBI). The process of raising finance doesn’t need to be complicated, but it can be very time-consuming, overwhelming and expensive if you don’t know what you’re doing. This is why it’s strongly recommended that you work with a professional advisory firm, such as Accelve.
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There are four crucial steps that need to be taken to ensure you successfully secure the right amount of funding for your business. These are:
1) Draft a robust business plan that considers all the key aspects of your business and its future objective/s.
2) Create an investment proposal that reflects your business plan and answers all the critical investor questions.
3) Approach the most-suited potential funders as part of a competitive process.
4) Negotiate the best terms and manage the closing process professionally.
Funders need to have complete confidence in you and your business, from the moment they are approached to the very end of the process, so it is vital that you work with a professional advisory firm that you can trust to skilfully guide you through every step.
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We help any business with an EBITDA of £1 million and up, with funding needs in excess of £2 million. The business also needs to be profitable with good visibility of cash flow so that it can support the finance structure required. We also help high growth startups - see early stage startup funding section.
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Over the last 20+ years of working in corporate finance, we have built up a vast number of trusted relationships with equity and debt providers across the globe, including traditional private equity, venture capital, banks, mezzanine debt, asset-based lending, as well as alternative funds, such as family offices and individual high-net-worth investors. As such, we pride ourselves on being able to source all suitable options and advising you on the best funding package for your business’s needs.
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Whilst most funders will ultimately want to know and often speak to the the people running the business, they can be frustrated when they are approached directly and then have to waste time asking for missing information or discover that the business itself isn’t completely investor or lender-ready. Funders appreciate it when they are advised by a professional advisory firm as they know that the proposal will be well-prepared and that the business would have been advised accordingly. When we approach investors and lenders, they immediately know that they will be saving time and money when assessing the information we provide them. This positive first impression also helps to secure you the best terms for your funding package.
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There are several reasons why some businesses aren’t successful in raising finance, with the most common ones being:
- Poorly prepared as a business for funder scrutiny
- Unable to clearly articulate your business plan
- Incomplete or inconsistent financial information, including forecasts
- Not clear on the value proposition and value drivers
- Missing information about the business’s performance and risks
- Funding proposal that doesn’t include all the required information
Ultimately, as soon as a bad first impression has been made, it becomes very difficult to gain the investor’s full confidence in you and your business and expect them to part with their money. This is why we strongly recommend that you work alongside a professional advisory firm, such as ourselves.
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Yes, absolutely. Before we reach out to any funders, we make sure that you agree on who we are going to approach. This includes discussing any potential investors and lenders that you’d like us to consider. You ultimately decide who will be the preferred funder, we simply use our network and experience to suggest the most suitable backers.
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We have no doubt that your investment will pay for itself (and more) in terms of saving you a considerable amount of time, money and avoidable stress. This is because you will have:
1) a much higher chance of securing your required finance to start with,
2) we will also negotiate the best terms and drive down costs, and
3) you’ll have complete peace of mind that your business will be positioned in the best possible light so that you receive the right funding package for your business.
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Yes, your core management team should be able to carry on the business as usual. Potential investors and lenders will want to know that your leadership team is aligned and stable, otherwise this can pose a risk to the valuation process and therefore the finance needed.
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Private equity firms tend to work closely with the management team of the businesses they’ve invested in to ensure that the company’s performance and strategic direction is constantly being reviewed, with the necessary improvements made.
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In addition to the capital itself, business owners typically benefit from the private equity firm’s connections and deep sector knowledge/expertise, which helps them grow exponentially and gain more market share. On a more personal level, business owners can realise some of its value and reduce their level of engagement, yet still continue to reap the benefits of its future success.
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Whilst we have specific sector knowledge as a result of the different deals we’ve made happen, we work with many different sectors, so our experience remains very diverse. This naturally means we bring unique insights to our clients, helping them to create robust business plans and completing the deals they want.
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Our fees vary depending on the scope of the engagement. Our corporate finance related fees tend to have a large component which is based on the success of a transaction completing. Our strategy advice fees are normally charged as monthly retainer fees or charged on an adhoc time basis. Our fees are always tailored to your specific needs, ensuring we are completely aligned.
A selection of brands our team have worked with
Recent insights.
