Take Cash or Equity?
Should you Gamble on a Startup?

Startups can need your services, but they’re often cash poor. If their business has potential for sustained growth and scale-up, they might offer you a percentage of the business (equity) instead of cash. This can be appealing if the growth potential seems promising, and you don’t need cash now. How might you decide?

1. Assess your needs for cash and your risk tolerance.
If you need immediate cash from your business, the choice is obvious. But some people are willing to take equity, bet on client success, and risk losing a large investment of unpaid work for the potential of future “big” gain. That’s okay if you won’t lose sleep over your decision. Remember, startups have no histories to analyze, and they’re challenged with many unknowns and “best-guess” decisions. Also, if you opt for an equity project, you might not have time to serve other clients who could pay immediate cash.

2. Assess business potential and client’s ability to grow the company.
Entrepreneurs are always optimistic about the potential of their product or service. You need to dig down to analyze Reachable Market Size, Customer Value, Potential Sales, Pricing, and Profit. The product might be a world-beater, but the client and management team might not have the expertise to make a success of the business. (Get help to do the digging).

3. Become knowledgeable about Equity Agreements and Pitfalls.
Be prepared for an overwhelming array of various options, legal issues and “paperwork” that will become part of your client equity agreement. (Seek advice and help from experts).

4. Perform ‘Due Diligence” on the Startup Company.
One meaning of “Due Diligence” is to investigate and confirm that the information and estimates provided by the Startup Business are sufficient, true, and based upon sound assumptions. (Seek advice and help from experts).

5. Document all agreements.
It’s too easy to “handshake” verbally in your dealings with a client. (Get it in writing. Have witnesses signed the contracts. Get help from a lawyer).

A Real-Life “Learning” Story: I own 15% equity in a defunct startup company. I made many blunders, especially not getting help from experts. I’ve learned a lot but should’ve learned before taking equity. Over 18 months, (without cash), I spent many hours (full-time) helping to develop and implement a funding plan, evaluate vendor performance, and assess the viability of an invention. I secured an angel investor who wrote to us checks and intended to continue investing in the company. The investor and I did little Due Diligence and relied too much on conversation. We discovered too late that the owners were incapable of managing money, vendors, or technical problems. When a vendor delivered a non-functional prototype, the investor backed out and the company folded. This was an expensive “learning opportunity.”

Fall 2024 Simon Vision Consulting Program Update

The Rochester Professional Consultants Network’s (RPCN) program of providing mentors to the University of Rochester’s Simon School of Business (Simon) Simon Vision Consulting Program (Simon Vision) is rolling once again as we provide mentors for a fourteenth consecutive semester.

For those of you that regularly read this column, you already know about Simon Vision and what a great opportunity it is. For those of you that are unfamiliar with Simon Vision, the program is an effort to increase experiential learning opportunities for Simon’s MBA and MS students.

There are sixteen projects serving fourteen clients. This semester the clients include traditional for-profit businesses, local not for profits, and the public sector (i.e. local government). We have twelve mentors helping the project teams out with four of our mentors doing “double duty” with more than one project. Thank you to all the mentors and especially those helping with more than one project team. The projects will run through early December and then we’ll get to find out how the project teams did as they present their results at the Simon Vision Showcase.

Though the clients, projects, teams, and mentors are set for this current semester; it is never too early to be looking for projects and mentors for the next semester.

Mentors
We’re already looking for mentors for the upcoming Spring semester. There will be 12 - 16 projects in total. We would like to have at least that many mentors to help.

• The mentors meet in person or virtually with their project manager and/or team anywhere from once per week to once per month depending upon the needs of the team and the project.
• How often and when you meet is a decision between you and the student project manager.
• It’s fun to work with the students and you might even find yourself learning some new things.
• If you’d like to become a mentor, please contact me at the information shown at the end of this article.

Projects
Simon Vision is also looking for new projects for the Spring semester.

• If you, a client, or an associate have an outsourceable project that could be completed in about 8 – 10 weeks, send an application to Simon Vision to get it included in the Spring 2025 semester.
• Projects are evaluated by the Simon Vision student governing board, and the leadership of Simon Vision will help you define the project requirements to be completed within these constraints.

Contact Information
If you are interested in having an SVC Project Team perform work for you, would like more information about the program, or especially if you’d like to volunteer to be an RPCN member mentor to a student team, please contact Dave Bassett at dbassett@basstat.com.

—Dave Bassett

RPCN Technical Forum

Please join us on November 1st for the latest installment of the Tech Forum.

1. We are continuing to implement our new format.
2. We still are a great resource for you to get your technology-related questions answered.
3. Since the August Tech Forum, we’ve been switching gears shortly after 9AM into something we like to call “Our Technology Adventures.” If you don’t know what Our Technology Adventures is, well, it’s an opportunity for you to tell your friends and colleagues here at RPCN about the new technology that you’ve started using recently and all the things you find cool and helpful about that tech gear. Recently we’ve discussed:

• High tech stud finders
• An AI Toothbrush
• Using AI using tools, such as Buzz and Chat GPT, to author articles
• A tool called the Fire Toolbox that removes bloatware from Kindle Fire devices

1. It ended up a fun discussion, so we plan to implement it again in the coming months. Come to the Tech Forum and discuss some cool stuff you’ve started using or to hear about some cool stuff others have been using.

This new format is more free form than the normal Tech Forum or Business Forum. It’s fun and we hope it continues to be fun. In the future, we’ll try other ideas, but this idea is working well for now.

If you can only stay for the part of the Forum when we’re discussing technology-related questions, that’s fine. If you can only join us for Our Technology Adventures, that’ll work too.

We’d love to have you attend the full meeting, including the time set aside until 10AM for individualized networking in our breakout rooms or at Ahren’s Benefits large meeting room which we moved to just last month. We’re no longer at the Al Sigl Center. We’re now at 2800 Dewey Avenue (about two miles north of Rte. 104). You can even come just for the networking, which typically starts just after 9:30 AM.

Our goal for the Tech Forum is to make this program as beneficial to our members and guests as possible.

If you’ve attended any of our recent Tech Forums, we’d love to get your thoughts about its new format, the tweaks we’ve made to it, and how to build on what we’ve had in it the past 30 years. Please send them to this email: TechForum@rochesterconsultants.org.