GETTING READY FOR AN IPO OR SALE TAKES A LOT OF WORK AND MOST COMPANIES ARE NOT PREPARED.

Preparing for an IPO is an exciting time, but almost always stressful for the management team.

The typical IPO journey is for the company to engage a team of advisors – lawyers, brokers, accountants, maybe a financial advisor or two – who all work like crazy over a few months to get the IPO done. The company’s directors and management team are flat out just trying to deal with the due diligence requests, write and verify the prospectus, attend all those due diligence committee meetings, and figure out what a dataroom is, let alone running the day to day business. It’s a lot of work, a lot of stress and costs a lot of money.

IPO Ready helps a business prepare for an IPO or other liquidity event, while in the meantime helping management make the company more ‘enterprise grade’. We map out your company’s journey to becoming exit-ready, revealing what gaps you have – and rest assured, there will be some gaps – for example: 

  • Remember Bill, your brother in law who developed your website or did some coding work for free? You don’t have anything from him giving your company ownership of the IP… 
  • Your first few customers – they don’t have signed contracts…
  • Oh, and some of your technical team never signed their employment contracts….
  • And let’s not forget the related party transactions and unaudited accounts…

Engaging us early can make the process more efficient, faster, cheaper and less stressful.

And even if you don’t go ahead with the IPO or sale you’ve got ongoing access to all the important information about your business, in a ‘single source of the truth’.

THE IPO PROCESS

We use a sophisticated online platform to check off the requirements as we go.

This covers a whole range of topics, broken down into more than 100 specific requirements, to collate and manage all the important information about your business.

  • Each topic and requirement is assigned to one person, ensuring accountability and efficiency.
  • You can invite staff members or trusted advisors to access the platform, meaning everyone has a common source of key information.
  • An intuitive scorecard lets you see how ready you are and which areas need the most work. Then, on an ongoing basis, the platform is updated regularly, giving management, directors and other trusted stakeholders continuous access to all your critical business information.
  • We then work with you side by side to close the gaps.
  • So when you’re ready to engage other external advisors and formally start the IPO or sale process, you’re in much better shape. Your company is presented professionally, there’s much less due diligence work for them to do and your risk profile has reduced.

BENEFITS

  • Saves management time
  • Less stress
  • Reduces risk for directors and management
  • Gives other advisors comfort / helps them do their job
  • Higher quality outcome

ADVANTAGES

  • We have worked in commercial management roles –we understand commercially pragmatic solutions (not ‘legal gold plating’)
  • Easier than management trying to do it all themselves
  • More efficient than external lawyers doing it all
  • Clearly scoped and phased work plan, with defined deliverables and fixed fees for fixed scope
  • Reduce legal bill shock