Money burning a hole in my pocket

No we are not running a sale – I just found the graphic amusing.

A good friend of mine told me a while back, “What you are seeking is simultaneously seeking you.” He was quoting someone else but a quick Google search attributes the phrase to several people so I can’t quote the source. The source probably doesn’t matter because the last original idea I had was to marry Jamie (and she’d probably dispute that being my intellectual property). The point is that if you tell people what you are looking for, you’ve got a much better chance of finding ‘it’ because ‘it’ is looking for you. Case in point…

I spend a large portion of my day sorting through business plans. The entrepreneurs have been referred to me by someone in my network. The entrepreneurs are invariably looking for money which is a good thing because that’s the only product that I sell. Venture debt and venture capital firms are constantly seeking deal flow. I wrote about some subtle distinctions between venture capital and venture debt here… http://bit.ly/tXbOSZ Most venture capitalists refer to their injecting capital into a business as ‘investing’. I refer to it as ‘selling’ because once I’ve made up my mind that I like the deal, I’m clearly selling the entrepreneur on working with me and my firm. I’m looking for emerging growth companies raising capital and they are simultaneously seeking me.

Some Specifics:

1. No jerks please: a sense of humor is a huge plus but at a minimum, I don’t finance management teams that are impolite.
   
2. Revenues: $5+ million in sales on a run-rate basis and strong growth potential; if you have less, call anyway and I’ll try to help
   
3. High Gross Margins: usually this means technology businesses but not always
   
4. The business needs expansion capital
   
5. VC backing? The business needs some source of capital – internally generated or raised externally. We are more focused on the business than the equity sponsors, if any.
   

We have a lot of capital to deploy so please keep those referrals coming. I’ll do the same.