Tools Used by Venture Capital Investment Funds - Essay Example

An Analysis of Marketing Communications Tools Used by Venture Capital Investment funds to attract Investors and Gain their Trust Venture Capital funds are attracting cash from all over the word to fuel the organic growth of the “new economy” (Snieksta 2011). The new economy may be defined as an economy characterized by the absence of business cycles or inflations. The new economy usually has an accelerated rate of productivity growth. Industries such as the software industry and e-commerce characterize the new economy.(Gronlund, 2008) It is the most trending financial services area with huge external interest caused by the recent Silicon Valley IPO(Initial Public Offering) success (BBG Markets, Jul11) Due to the fact that financial services Industry is relatively new Context for academic marketing literature, this dissertation will investigate current and potential utilization of marketing communication strategies that are or could be applied by Venture Capital (VC) Investment funds to attract investors and gain trust in their brand. This dissertation will focus on United Kingdom private equity and VC funding processes. Research will be based on these two factors 1) Paradigm of trust in existing inter-organisational relationships 2) Brand personality and marketing communications contribution toward building trust among investors. Background Marco factors in the background of this research make this case particularly interesting. Post credit crisis affects on financial industry (G.Soros 2009), current global sovereign debt crisis, consumer scepticism, have external, negative impact on trust in the industry. Lerner (2010) contends that “(...) financial crisis appears to have had a substantial negative effect on investors’ willingness to finance innovative entrepreneurship”. However, is it always the case? Most recent 2011private equity sector successes and boom in Venture Capital (VC) investments demonstrates that this sector is somewhat different and despite the economic crisis, money from institutional and private wealth is flowing into these funds with expectation of high-risk – high-return. Not just high-risk, on top of that, in comparison to traditional Hedge funds, VC funds are perceived as being less transparent and even sometimes associated with money laundering (V.Snieksta 2011). Hedge fund manager presenting in front of the panel of investors would normally quantify the nature of investment strategy. It can be presented by conventional portfolio theory ratios such as Beta, VAR, Risk, Alpha, and others. However, due to the nature of private and small cap equity firms, VC fund managers and directors can’t simply quantify the strategy of the fund; even sometimes the value of the fund is very subjective since assets in the fund are not priced in the market (Gompers,. 1997). Therefore, venture capital fund becomes a product where a lot of Trust needs to be created in order to attract investors. The perspective that venture capitalist funds are involved in money laundering can be highly detrimental for the funds as well as the entrepreneurs. We will try to analyse in this dissertation how trust can be built by the use of brand personalities and marcomms. Literature review 1. Value exchange system in Venture capital fund this dissertation does not consider either the informal venture capital market (which comprises private individuals, Angel investors), nor corporate level i.e. direct investments, and is rather focused on institutional venture capital industry. An angel investor is basically a private individual who invests money in a start up and gains convertible debt or equity ownership in return.(Gerald A. Benjamin, 2001).An angel investor usually acts alone or on the word of mouth of those close to him and is thus excluded from the perspective of this research. National Venture Capital Association define Institutional Venture capital (VC) fund as investment fund providing financial capital to early-stage, high-potential, high risk, growth start-up companies. The venture capital fund makes money by owning equity in the companies it invests in, which usually have a novel technology or business model in high technology industries, such as biotechnology, IT and software. The working of Venture Capitalist Funds In value exchange process, as illustrated in Figure 1 below, Capital for institutional level Venture capital firm is raised from wealthy private, corporate and/or institutional investors (pension funds, insurance companies) (Bottazzi, 2002, pp.235) into the fund and then managed by fund managers. “Venture capitalists finance their activity by raising ‘funds’ from institutional investors like pension funds, insurance companies or endowments. Each ‘fund’ is invested in a number of firms with a five- to ten-year horizon. Once a ‘fund’ is ended, its cash proceedings, which come from IPOs and trade sales, are distributed to investors together with any remaining equity holdings” (Bottazzi, 2002). Below we can see the value exchange process in investment process. This illustration identified the types of players we have who are participating in this exchange process: Figure 1. Exchange process in VC investment - Mason (2002) “Institutional venture capital industry comprises three actors (Figure 1): professional venture capital firms who raise finance from financial institutions (e.g. banks, insurance companies and pension funds) and other investors (e.g. corporations, universities, wealthy families, government agencies) to invest in businesses with high growth potential”(Mason (2002). Financial institutions invest/provide funding to Venture capital firm who then use their expertise to invest these funds into high growth-potential ventures and the circle continues. The exchange process illustrated above is self explanatory, however, in terms of researching the trust, Brand and marketing communications, our main focus within this institutional Venture Capital investment vehicle is on relationship between the Fund and Institutional investor. Throughout the whole dissertation when talking about Investor and Fund relationship we will refer the relationship below. This relationship starts with initial communication and leads to financial transaction and reporting. In order to establish, maintain and develop this relationship, trust is the key. The relationship as described above is not independent of macroeconomic factors such as the credit crisis, the global debt crisis etc. We will analyse how these circumstances affect the trust factor. The literature on this aspect will be collected from industry reports, current business articles, publicly available market data, market indices and charts. 2. Magnitude of trust in inter-organizational relationship As Morgan and Hunt suggests, “Many writers contend that one of the crucial factors associated with the development and maintenance of inter-organisational relationships is trust”. They also argue that trust is compulsory for this type of relationship to continue to exist and foster. (Doney and Cannon, 1997). Therefore, this qualifies our next step in investigation of the research topic – construction of trust in different stages of relationship. In the marketing communications context, West and Paliwoda, 1996 contemplate about counterparties entering into series of interactions and exchanges through which levels of trust and commitment develop. The purpose of the section 1, in the literature review was to identify a playground and boundaries of the research, so that we could investigate these interactions and exchanges in particular context of VC and Investor relationship. After narrowing and clarifying geographical and institutional focus, we have validated the importance of the trust in this investment exchange process above. So trust is important. Therefore, the second part of literature review will be focused on getting into details and construction of the paradigm of trust in financial services context. 3. How to develop trust in existing relationships? Fill claims that although trust is extremely important in any B2B context, it depends a lot on the power exchange between the two parties, the past history between them as well as the risk involved in the business. (Fill, 2006) As Pavlou, 2002 suggests, Inter-organisational trust is based on two main dimensions: credibility and benevolence. Credibility concerns the extent to which one organisation believes (is confident) that another organisation will undertake and complete it’s agreed roles and tasks. The question which arises here is that what communication tools can be used by venture capitalists to build their credibility? Benevolence is concerned with goodwill, which the other organisation will not act opportunistically, even were the conditions for exploitation to arise. In this research we will try to analyse how this factor works out. Do organizations place more value on the trust that they have established over long period of time or do they do their business activities strictly according to financial analysis. We will analyse some relationships and see how trust did or did not play a part in the interaction between the parties. Zucker suggests that trust and reliability between two individuals or organizations develops of three main elements. These elements are the personal characteristics, institutions and the process in which the relations develop. We explain these three key elements with examples in the table below. (B. Nooteboom, 2003) Basis of trust Examples Characteristic Trust Family members , community , culture , religion Institutional trust Rules , professional standards and ethics Process based Loyalty and commitment Pavlou (2002) argues that there are five means by which institutional trust can be encouraged (see Table 1). Perceived Monitoring: Refers to the supervision of transactions by, for example, regulatory authorities or owners of b2b market exchanges. This can mitigate uncertainty through a perception that sellers or buyers who fail to conform to established rules and regulations will be penalised. Perceived accreditation: Refers to badges or symbols that denote membership of externally recognised bodies that bestow credibility, authority, security and privacy on a selling organisation. Perceived legal bonds: Refers to contracts between buyers, sellers and independent third parties, so that the costs of breaking a contract are perceived to be greater than the benefits of such an action. Trust in the selling organisation is therefore enhanced when bonds are present. Perceived feedback: Refers to signals about the quality of an organisation’s reputation and such feedback from other buyers about sellers, perhaps through word-of-mouth communication, can deter sellers from undertaking opportunistic behaviour. Perceived cooperative norms: Refers to the values, standards and principles adopted by those parties to a series of exchanges. Cooperative norms and values signal good faith and behavioural intent, through which trust is developed. Table 1 - Pavlou 2002 We will try to analyse the framework provided by Pavlou in our research. We will see how and if the above mentioned factors which affect trust can be strengthened with the help of Marcomms and brand personalities. 4. How do Investors view trust? There is an extensive literature available on hoe do the consumers view trust? A lot of this literature has been studied and the following points can be summarised based on the literature. We will try to see how these points are valid even in the case of venture capitalist funds. Trust as a Safety Net – Trust allows the customer to minimise uncertainty and risk. In the case of venture capitalist funds both these factors are very high as customer is investing his money into unchartered territory. Singh and Sirdeshmukh have said in their research that a long time horizon of delivery as well as the inability to trust the service before actual consumption makes trust a very valuable decision factor for investing in financial services in particular and venture capitalist funds in particular.(Singh and Sirdeshmukh , 2000) Past Experiences – Gounaris claims that trust is a factor developed from accumulation of past experiences. (Gounaris , 2003)These past experiences may be personal or of those which are close to him. A firm which has provided positive experience to other customers is also viewed positively by the customers. But the problem in the case of venture capitalism is that there is not much previous experience to rely on. Almost all the projects that are supported by venture capitalist funds are unique in some aspects. Can previous projects funded by the capitalist fund act as a benchmark for the success of future projects? Elliot and Yannopoulou claim that customer tryst is more a psychological factor than a rational factor. If the overall brand reputation is favourable they will be more inclined to invest money in the fund even if their projects are new.(Elliott and Yannopoulou , 2007).Taking into account these factors we can safely say that brand personality and marcomms will play a important role in trust formation. Rational and Emotional Trust – All investors eve if they are institutional investors do not act rationally in order to select the best fund for investment. It has to be understood that there are humans in these institutions who take the final decision to select the venture capitalist fund in which they will invest the money and these humans are not free from emotions even if they act on behalf of an institution. Rational trust is built on the basis of knowledge, competence, ability and integrity displayed by the fund. It is not only necessary for venture capitalist funds to have these characteristics but to also convey them to the customers. This communication happens with the help of brand personality and the use of communication techniques. Prof Chris Halliburton claims that trust in financial services is composed of three factors. These factors are credibility, integrity and empathy. (Chris Halliburton, 2010).Although the venture capitalist business is fundamentally different from all other financial services but it means these factor play an even more important role in the business. We will analyse the brand personality and marcomms in our research and see how these three factors can be enhanced by the use of proper marketing communication strategies. 5. The different phases of relationships Several models are available which study the relationship building process between the customer and the company. These phases are true even for venture capitalist funds. These phases are the pre-relationship phase, the negotiation phase and the relationship development phase. (Poul Houman Andersen, 2001).All these three phases are unique and different. These phases require different communication strategies by the funds. The message which has to be conveyed by the firms is different in each of these phases. A pre-relationship phase communication will not be suitable for a customer with which the relationships have already been developed. We will try to analyse how these three different phases are dealt with by the venture capitalist funds. In the primary research we will try to analyse their marketing communication strategies and analyse if these strategies are differentiated for different customers or is the same message conveyed to all the investors. 6. Trust deficit due to Macroeconomic Factors The macroeconomic factors such as the recent global economic downturn are events which no one firm can control. However the side –effects of this downturn has to be borne by everyone concerned. Ronald Katz in his report which studies the relationship between financial institutions and consumer risk says that prior to 2008 big financial institutions were valued more by the investors as compared to small ones.(Ronald Katz , 2011).A Bank of America was considered to be more reliable by the investors when compared to smaller banks. However this is not the case in the present circumstances. Investors do not really believe big firms in these days due to the failure of big firms like Lehman Brothers. These macroeconomic factors make the marketing communication strategy of the venture capitalist funds very difficult job. We will analyse in the research paper factors which investors look before investing money in the time of financial crisis. Have they become more rational or emotional in their approach? Do the marketing communication strategies reflect the concerns of the investors? What more needs to be done in order to gain this trust. These factors will be discussed in the research paper. 7. How do Marcomms create trust? What is the importance of external image, branding strategies, and brand personalities associated with the firm? Since we already proved that trust is a significant component for the relationship between VC and Investor, let’s further investigate how particular VC fund managers and their marketing department are using Marketing communications to build trust initially. After looking at exchange process between service provider (fund) and a client (investor), it is significantly important to stretch the stage of the relationship this exchange is at. In the section above we touched on theories on concept of trust in existing relationship. However, initial stage of relationship, attracting new investments is even more exciting area of research since marketing communication tools such as branding strategies are playing a significant role in building trust to the level required. What is the level required for the initial stage of relationship? Acquisition and retention marketing are often set to be at loggerheads with each other and firms often try to find a balancing act. Marketers often use the leaky bucket analogy which says that if all your customers are leaking out of the bucket than you are wasting time and money on acquisitions. We will try to analyse if trust plays any role in acquisitions of new customers or is it an important tool only for retention. Another factor that will be analysed in this study will be the differentiation that needs to be done between the strategies to be followed in the 2 cases. Quite big part of Investment fund appeal lies in the personality of the brand and people itself. It encapsulates essence of the brand, where in financial institution case could potentially be strategy, riskiness and profitability (Fournier 2001). However, in the context of brand personality, Hatch and Schultz (2001) highlight the importance of consistency throughout the organisation in terms of communications about the brand. This leads to the concept if Integrated Marketing Communications which helps to “harmonise” the promotional tools for audience to receive a consistent message (Fill, 2010). Apart from IMC, de Chernatony argues that employees with more successful brands have a much clearer understanding of their brands. This understanding normally translates into clear understanding of the organisation’s vision and strategy. Once the employees are aware about where the organization needs to go and what is the strategy it is following to reach there; they are at a better position to convince external customers and build trust amongst them. Internal customers such as contractors, supply partners and employees are as equally important for an organization as are external customers. We will analyse this factor in the research paper. We will try to understand how much does employee understanding and clarity of the brand translates into trust outside the firm. Later stage of the research will develop a model based on literature review in branding strategy and test the affect of this model on trust building by the method of an empirical research. Model will be developed from further reading e.g. Farquhar, J. 2010, and Marketing Financial Services: Second edition and current arguments already touched in the literature review. We would also try to gather the comments from leading organizations about this model through a questionnaire and try to analyse the effect of the model on trust relationships. Research Question/Problem As we have seen through the literature review done above, the inter-organisational relationships are often based on trust. This is more the case in the case of a financial organization which is not actually selling you anything apart from trust that your money will be safe with them and will appreciate in the due course of time. A lot of research material is available on the factors which build trust between the organizations but little research is available on the factors which help a venture capitalist build trust among the fund investors. This is probably because venture capitalism has come of age recently and is relatively a new avenue for investors as compared to stock markets and other avenues of investments. It is precisely this lack of research which we will try to address. The relationship will be explored based on the factors which build trust between two specific market players the VC fund and the investor. We will further limit the scope of the research by studying only how marketing communication strategies and brand personality play a role in building this trust. Objectives of the dissertation - Identify and determine what marketing tools are used to maintain the existing level of trust in already established and long term relationship - Investigate how brand image and additional marketing communication tools contribute to trust and credibility in the pre-relationship phase and the negotiation phases. We will also study the difference in marketing communication used in the first case. - Challenges posed to trust building by the recent global economic crisis and the trust deficit caused among investors as a result of the same. Proposed methodology Primary research: Following from dissertation objectives, primary research will be based on two different data collection methods. The first research will be based on the existing relationships that VC funds have with their current investors. We will try to find out the role played by Marcomms as well as brand personality in the development of these strategies. Did the VC funds tried to use the marcomms strategies and brand personality in gaining these clients or were these acquisitions a result of personal rapport between individuals of the company. Target Venture capital funds will be selected based on sampling criteria: data availability, approachability, and size and brand recognition. Using public, personal and professional contacts, researcher will try to reach to 5 different Venture capital funds and their marketing/PR representatives. After initial communication, individual in-depth-interview will be arranged and sample qualitative questioning framework will be developed and adapted to the sample. Main purpose is to test theory of construction of the trust as suggested by Pavlou, 2002, to understand the key driving factors of this paradigm and tool that drive it. Contacts will be selected from the audience which meets are most convenient, liquid and approachable sources. Therefore convenience sampling method will be adopted. Understanding that, limitations of this sampling approach and potential errors in data will be discussed and considered before analysis. The second objective will be concerned primarily with questionnaires of the investors who have recently joined the fund. I will try to question some of these new investors. The questionnaire targeted at them will focus on the factors which propelled them to join the fund. These factors will then be compared to the marcomms strategies (if any) being used by the VC firm and the brand personality being portrayed by the firm. Do the investors rely on these factors or did they rely on one to one relationships with one of the fund managers? Were they impressed with the brand personality being portrayed by the firm or did they invest based on word of mouth? This analysis will be based simply by asking why did they invest in the funds and the analysis part will be done based on the answers we receive. No question will be asked regarding the marketing strategies or the PR strategies of the VC fund as the investor might be experiencing post purchase rationalization and may try to convince him and us that he did look at the marketing campaigns and the brand image before deciding. Secondly, in order approach the second objective, external marcomms analysis will be conducted of the same Venture capital funds. Secondary research: At the same time, secondary research will be used to analyse current literature, articles, news and quantitative data which is relevant to the third objective of the research and will help to reach a top-down understanding of value exchange process as well as macro factors, which have a significant impact of the main role of trust. Main data source for secondary data will be Bloomberg Professional Service Data feed, news and analytics and peer reviewed academic journals. Compliance and integrity: During the process of this dissertation Code of conduct established by Market research society will be followed as instructed by academic body and fair research practice of the university. Proposed analysis Data analysis will be based on the individual Venture capital fund - Investor relationship basis, and will be analysed taking the case by case scenario, but testing same theories. In-depth-interviews will be transcribed and also evidence for information and data from marketing communicates, ads, websites, blogs, will be attached in the appendix. References B. Nooteboom, Frédérique Six.,2003, The Trust Process in Organisations : Empirical studies of the determinants and the process of trust development,Edward Elgar Publishing Chernatony, L, 2006, Internal brand factors driving successful financial services brands, European Journal of Marketing, Vol 40, 5/6. Chris Fill,. Business to Business Marketing. , Pearson Education Chris Fill, 2010, Marketing Communications: Interactivity, Communities and Content, Prentice Hall; 5th edition Colin M Mason and Richard T Harrison, 2002, “The geography of venture capital investments in the UK”, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, New Series, Vol.27, No. 4 pp. 427-451 Doney, P.M. and Cannon, J.P., 1997, an examination of the nature of trust in buyer–seller relationships. Journal of Marketing, 62(2), 1–13. Elliot and Yannopoulou, 2007, the nature of trust in brands: A psychological model, European Journal of Marketing, vol.41, no.9/10,pp.988-998 Fournier, Susan, 1998, "Consumers and Their Brands: Developing Relationship Theory in Consumer Research," Journal of Consumer Research, 24 (March), 343-73. Gerald A. Benjamin, Joel Margulis,2001 The Angel Investor's Handbook : How to profit from early stage investing, Bloomberg Press, Geer Jr., JF 1997, 'Brand war on Wall Street. (Cover story)', Financial World, 166, 5, p. 54, Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost, viewed 9 July 2011. Gronlund, Laurence,2008, The New Economy., Cosimo Gompers, P., and J. Lerner, 1997, The Valuation of Private Equity Investments, paper presented at the Stanford Conference on the Economic Foundations of Venture Capital, March 22. Gounaris, 2003, Trust and Commitment influences on customer retention: insight from business to business services, Journal of Business Research, Vol.58, pp.126-140 Hellmann, ManjuPuri , 2000 , The Interaction Between Product Market and Financing Strategy: The Role of Venture Capital, The Review of Financial Studies, Vol.13, No.4, pp. 959-984 Knights A, Morgan, G, 1994, The Consumer Rules? An Examination of the Rhetoric and “Reality” of Marketing in Financial Services", European Journal of Marketing, Vol. 28 Iss: 3, pp.42 - 54 Laura Bottazzi and Marco DaRin , 2002, Venture Capital In Europe and the financing of innovative companies, Economic Policy, Vol. 17, No. 34 pp. 231-269 Leverin, A; Liljander, V., 2006, Does relationship marketing improve customer relationship satisfaction and loyalty? The International Journal of Bank Marketing, pp. 232 Mariampolski H. 2001, “Qualitative market research: a comprehensive guide”, Sage: London Morgan, R.M. and Hunt, S.D., 1994, the commitment-trust theory of relationship marketing. Journal of Marketing, 58 (July), 20–38. Pavlou, P.A., 2002, Institution-based trust in inter organisational exchange relationships: the role of online B2B marketplaces on trust formation. Journal of Strategic Information Systems, 11(3–4) (December), 215–43. Poul Houman Anderson, 2001, Relationship Development and marketing communication: an integrative model, Journal of Business and industrial marketing, vol16, no.3, pp.167-182. Ronald Katz, 2011, Bridging the trust deficit: US Financial Institutions: Consumer Risk and the hormone of love, Business Intelligence Journal, January 2011, pp.107-115 Saunders, J, and Watters, 1993, "Branding Financial Services", International Journal of Bank Marketing, Vol. 11 Iss: pp.32 - 386. Soros, G, 2009, the new paradigm for financial markets: the credit crisis of 2008 and what it means”. ISBN 978–1–58648–683–9 Sheedy, Elizabeth, 1997, marketing derivatives: a question of trust. The International Journal of Bank Marketing, pp. 22-31. Singh and Sirdeshmukh, 2000, Agency and Trust Mechanism in Consumer Satisfaction and Loyalty Judgements. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, vol.28, no.1, pp.150-167 Snieska, V and Venckuviene, V., 2011, Hybrid Venture Capital Funds in Lithuania: Motives, Factors and Present State of Development”, Journal of Engineering Economics, 22(2), 157-164 Theron, E, Terblanche, N, &Boshoff, C 2011, The Antecedents of Trust in Business-to-Business Financial Services, Journal of Business-to-Business Marketing, 18, 2, pp. 188-213, Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost, viewed 6 July 2011 Vickers, M, 2000, Branding an bull, Kemper-style, BusinessWeek, 3675, p. 126, Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost, viewed 9 July 2011. West, D.C. and Paliwoda, S.J., 1996, advertising client–agency relationships. European Journal of Marketing, 30(8), 22–39. . Further reading: Two Roads to Updating Brand Personality Impressions: Trait versus Evaluative InferencingAuthor(s): GitaVenkataramaniJohar, JaideepSengupta, Jennifer L. AakerSource: Journal of Marketing Research, Vol. 42, No. 4 (Nov., 2005), pp. 458-469 Lucas, G. &Dorrian, M. Guerrilla Advertising: unconventional Brand communication, Laurence King Aaker, David (2002) Building Strong Brands, Prentice Madden, Thomas J., Frank Fehle and Susan Fournier (2006) ‘Brands matter: an empirical demonstration of the creation of shareholder value’, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science Anderson, C 2009, 'In today's climate, all financial firms are challenger brands', Advertising Age, 80, 24, p. 11, Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost, viewed 9 July 2011. Appendix ______________________________________________ Appendix A - Time line: 9thAugust – submission of Proposal B 30th August – Literature review, methodology, discussion framework 25thSeptember – Data collection and secondary research 20thOctober – Analysis, findings, filling gaps and completing final tasks 20thNovember – Submission of the dissertation ____________________________________________________ Appendix B- Venture capital jargon (National association of venture capital funds, 2011) Limited partnership: typical venture-capital firm organization. The ‘general Partners’ (venture capitalists) manage the firm and assume full liability, while ‘Limited partners’ (investors) provide funds and assume no liability beyond the Contributed capital. Initial public offering (IPO): ‘going public’, i.e. offering of corporate stock To the public by a company which gets listed on a public stock exchange. Venture capitalists’ preferred mode of cashing in their investment. Write-off: the disaster scenario – a funded company fails and the venture Capital writes off the investment. Most venture investments end up as write-offs. ‘Exit’: venture capitalists typically exit their investee companies through an IPO, a trade sale, or by writing-off (liquidating) a non-performing company. Seed finance: small investment (in the order of a few hundred thousand Euros) that allows an entrepreneur to verify whether his project is feasible and Economically attractive. At this stage venture capitalists help to explore the Viability of a project. Start-up finance: investment to operationalize a firm (attracting employees And executives, developing a prototype and/or implementing marketing tests, Etc.). Venture capitalists may at this stage help with the company organization and corporate strategy. Expansion finance: investment to reach industrial-scale production, upgrade The production facilities and attract further employees. At this stage venture Capitalists may help find additional financing, clients and suppliers. As the Company grows and needs revenue, they may also help recruit marketing and Other non-technical executives. Later stage finance: investment to help the firm become a market leader And unleash its earning potential, preparing it for trade sale or IPO. At this Stage venture capitalists may help set the stage for trade sale or IPO Read More