After working diligently on your business
plan and targeting potential investors, you’ve managed to snag some much-needed
capital.
Good work. Now what?
Essentially, you have to live up to the
promise of your pitch and deliver the goods. How you involve your investors in
the early phase of your startup will set the tone for the rest of your
relationship.
The goal is to make sure you can remain on
solid ground with the money people. This will help improve your relationships
throughout the business community and open up the possibility to return to
those investors for expansion down the road. Before you get there, consider
these proactive steps for involving your investors:
Set a
board meeting calendar. By setting a board-meeting
calendar you're letting your investors know that you're serious about the
business and about getting their input. You should actually set the schedule for
the entire year. You might have to rearrange some future meetings but at least
your calendar will be a start for this process.
Have
an investor dinner. Before the first official board
meeting, you might want to think about having an informal gathering over dinner
for all of your investors and board members. This is a great opportunity for
everyone to get to know each other. Then when you head into those board
meetings you can dispense with the small talk and introductions and get right
down to business.
Plan
an offsite meeting. This should be a full-day
affair. You can break up the day with some recreation like playing golf at a
hotel but most of the time you'll be in conference to discuss all the matters
pertaining to the company and the direction it is headed. You should save this
marathon meeting for the third or fourth meeting of the year. During this
meeting you can also have members of your staff come by to make reports or
presentations about the growth of the company and problem areas to work through.
Schedule
one-on-one meetings. Hopefully your board of
investors will be frank and honest at all of the company meetings. However,
there might be a huge benefit from maintaining these relationships outside of
the boardroom. The occasional one-on-one lunch or dinner meeting is the perfect
opportunity to keep those lines of communication open and uncover any
"hidden agenda" issues.
Stay
out in front of bad news. It's not all going to be
"rainbows and unicorns." You'll have some dark days ahead. When
trouble happens don't try to bury it in a company report. Get out in front of
the bad news and let your investors know you're in top of things. No matter how
bad it might be they would rather hear it from you then from Twitter!
Overall you want your investors to feel that are a
vital part of your company's success. That's not a stretch. All you have to do
is honor their commitment with honest communication.
