Finconoso

Don’t be afraid to ask for feedback and take that into account for the next time you pitch. Now if the investor isn’t willing to provide any, don’t push the issue. It is their time you’ve just spent and are asking more of, so it’s a fine balance to achieve.
If you can, have another team member there to take notes and review with them after the fact. Look for weak-points, areas you stumbled over, and slides that led to negative reactions from the investor. Keep refining, practicing, and executing even if you think you’ve found the perfect pitch.
You’ll really never know how good your pitch is until you actually do it. Don’t stress yourself out, and treat every investor pitch as a learning experience for you and your business. You’ll only continue to get better and better and can apply those learnings to every area of your business.

To utilize incentive stock options, both employers and employees must meet regulations for the employee to obtain the favorable tax treatment. Requirements for the grant to qualify as an ISO include (but are not limited to):
The option price must be at least the FMV of the stock at the grant date;
The option must be granted pursuant to a written plan that generally must be approved by the shareholders within 12 months before or after the date the plan is adopted;
Grants are only to employees and are generally nontransferable;
The option plan term does not exceed 10 years, and the employees must exercise the option within 10 years of the grant date;
The total FMV of the stock options that first become exercisable is limited to $100,000 in any calendar year; and
The employee must not dispose of the ISO shares sooner than two years after the grant date and one year after the exercise date.

If there’s a possibility of a merger or acquisition in your company’s future, your business plan should detail how growth will lead to higher profitability. An outsourced CFO is an experienced and cost-effective resource who can help you prepare a business plan for mergers or acquisitions. A CFO can advise your company whether to proceed with a deal or not. They can also help you make necessary changes in corporate structure and take other actions to make the transition smoother.
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Are you planning on getting acquired, going public (very few companies actually do), or something else? Show you’ve done some due diligence on this exit strategy, including the companies you’re targeting, and why it would make sense three, five, or ten years down the road.
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The formula for net burn rate is simple: just subtract operating expenses from revenue.
With eCommerce companies, burn rate might not apply given that you are likely bringing in revenues from day one and investing in the business with existing profits. However, when you are looking to accelerate the growth of your store, spending will be ahead of the sales which is when you will have to manage your burn rate.
As well, your business might be bringing in revenues from product sales, but may also be spending more in other areas of the business (hiring talent, technology, marketing) in order to grow.

In cases where companies allow for early exercise and the share price is low enough that employees can afford to exercise their options quickly, this can also provide some substantial tax savings as well.
Early exercise of options will enable employees to hold their shares for long enough that they can be taxed at lower long-term capital gains rates. However, if they early exercise and don’t file the 83(b) for their individual taxes, the IRS won’t recognize ownership of the share until it’s been fully vested.

When you're ready to scale your business and you aren’t in a position to hire a full-time chief financial officer to forge the path, outsourcing CFO services can help you take the right steps that will lead you to growth. They can help you scale your business by:
Ensuring your financial infrastructure is ready
Building the most cost-efficient tax structure
Helping obtain financing or raising funds
Performing financial projections and risk assessment
By bringing an outsourced CFO on board, you’ll be in excellent hands and positioned for strong growth so your company can thrive now and in the future.

Will you need to raise multiple rounds of financing? Is the investment you’re seeking a convertible note, an equity round, or something else?
Remind the audience why your management team is capable of managing their investment for growth. Tell investors how much you need, why you need the money, what it will be used for, and the intended outcome.

Lifetime Value – sometimes referred to as customer lifetime value – is the total dollar amount you’re likely to receive from a customer over the life of their account with you. This helps you account for and accurately predict your business’s revenue and profit.

A vesting schedule gives employees full ownership rights to employer-provided assets over time. For example, a vesting schedule for pension plans is set up in a way that determines the specific period after which a beneficiary acquires full ownership rights to the assets.
It is also used to allocate profits, equity, and stock options to employees. Employees forfeit their unvested portion of assets if they leave before being 100% vested. Exclusive ownership rights accrue depending on the length of an employee’s contract.

Since the CFO is not working at the company on a day-to-day basis, investors have more confidence that the reports are unbiased. Outsourcing is also helpful because an outsourced CFO doesn’t have an emotional connection with staff members or particular departments.

The best way to communicate your value proposition over your competitors’ is to show this slide in a competitive matrix format—where you list your competitors down the left side of the page, you have your features/benefits across the top, and place checkmarks in the boxes for which company offers that service. Ideally, you have checkmarks across the top for every category, and your competitors lack in key areas to show your competitive advantage.

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Without the ability to show investors why your startup will be valuable at scale, and how your team will get it there, investors may walk away. Ultimately any startup success story includes an investor seeking a return, which naturally, requires an understanding of present day value versus future value.
Measuring your valuation and driving the numbers behind it can help your company find what it needs to move to the next stage.

Some businesses use an ordinary check book for this system, but many businesses choose to use electronic accounting software programs such as QuickBooks.
The IRS suggests that these are the types of records a small business should keep by category:
Gross Receipts of the income you receive from the business.
Purchases are the items you buy and resell to customers Your supporting documents should show the amount paid and that the amount was for purchases.
Expenses are the costs you incur (other than purchases) to carry on your business. Your supporting documents should show the amount paid and a description that shows the amount was for a business expense.
If you deduct travel, entertainment, gift, or transportation expenses, you must be able to substantiate certain elements of those expenses.
Assets are the property, such as machinery and furniture, that you own and use in your business. You must keep records to verify certain information about your business assets. You need records to compute the annual depreciation and the gain or loss when you sell the assets.

Whether working on an interim basis or not, a CFO can help the organization to manage acceleration, scale effectively to meet changing business demands, and “mature” and formalize its operations, so it's prepared to meet whatever the future holds, head-on.
Whether your business is starting up or scaling up, Finconoso can help provide a highly skilled interim CFO to complement your leadership team. We specialize in finance and accounting, financial optimization, business systems, risk and compliance, taxation, and operations management.

You’ll see investors taking out their smartphone calculators to make sure your numbers make sense, so give them the information they need to see that your calculations are accurate.
If your financial chart shows “hockey-stick growth,” be sure to explain what happens to cause those inflection points. Now it can be incredibly easy to spend a ton of your time explaining financials but keep in mind that you need to speak to them quickly. If investors want to hear or know more, add your full financials to the extended pitch deck or offer to answer questions after you’ve finished presenting.

The rise of digital technology is disrupting the traditional contact center. The exponential growth in connected devices, as well as social media and apps, is fundamentally changing how people engage with brands. This creates a stark challenge that your business is probably already grappling with: as more customers move online, so must customer service. Faced with growing expectations for personalized, real-time engagement, more organizations are striving to reach customers over the internet.

Employers run the risk of improperly characterizing independent contractors. Many startups prefer to use independent contractors to avoid paying Social Security, Medicare taxes, and unemployment taxes and to avoid providing health insurance coverage.
But the IRS is paying more attention to misclassification issues. In fact, companies like Uber that treat workers as independent contractors are under scrutiny. If the employer has significant control over the worker, the IRS may claim the worker should have been classified as an employee. The IRS gives some guidance in IRS Publication 15-A.
Companies must give their workers IRS Form W-2 setting forth their compensation for the year, and Form 1099 to independent contractors, by February 1st of each year.
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Research shows that CFOs are collaborating more often with chief information officers (CIOs). These executives work together to help senior management consider operational and financial issues — and weigh the potential risks — when the business needs to implement new technology solutions. The CFO-CIO partnership is especially vital to the finance function’s transition to new technologies, including advanced tools like artificial intelligence (AI).

In addition to representing your amazing team, be sure to share what skill-sets you may be missing. Most startup teams are missing some key talent—be it marketing, management expertise, programmers, sales, operations, financial management, and so on. Let them know that you know that you don’t know everything.

Even if you have a physical location, you likely have either shifted to an online-only model or have put more focus on selling efficiently and profitably online. You should have dashboards and information that answers the following questions:
Are we bringing enough customers into our sales funnel?
What levers do we need to move to be more profitable?
Will our current working capital be enough to deliver and sustain our desired growth rate, or do we need an infusion of cash?

The founders of the company should be aware that if there is more than 50% change in ownership of the company during any three-year period (due to company issuances of additional stock and/or stockholder transfers of stock), any NOLs generated prior the change in ownership generally may be used in each year thereafter only to a limited extent, based on the value of the company’s stock at the time of the change multiplied by a percentage prescribed on a monthly basis by the IRS (currently approximately 2.5%). A company’s need for raising capital by issuing additional stock to new investors will usually outweigh the benefit of preserving the unlimited use of its NOLs.

Financial aptitude — To guide a startup during the challenging early years, the CFO needs solid accounting experience, business acumen and an excellent grasp of business analytics.
Strategic thinking — A creative and visionary CFO is instrumental in helping the organization find a path toward long-term goals that may seem unobtainable. They are also able to identify opportunities when others see only problems. Today’s strategic CFOs can bring a strong combination of business and operational knowledge to the table.
Tech abilities — The CFO must have a strong understanding of technology, as technology influences almost every single decision in a modern business. Pursuing process automation, for example, can save time and money. And using digital services can broaden a business’s reach and deepen connections with consumers. The CFO should understand how technology impacts their business, both in terms of the opportunities it can create and the challenges it can present.

This is usually one of the most skipped sections of an investor pitch and a full business plan. How will you reach your customers? How much will it cost? How will you measure success?
Your financials should easily allow you to calculate your customer acquisition costs. But you should also mention how you intend to reach customers, which channels you’ll be advertising on, and even present an example of messaging. You’ve done your research, you know your customer, why not show investors what that will look like in action.

Growing new visitors indicates your awareness marketing is working. Growing repeat traffic indicates people coming back for more. Growing a new client base is a challenge, but there are a lot of great resources available that focus heavily on building the top of your funnel.

A home office must be a separate office, used solely for business purposes. The home office deduction is available for homeowners and renters.

There are two basic arguments for a home to qualify for a home office deduction:

Regular and Exclusive Use. You must use part of your home for conducting business. For example, if you use an extra room to run your business, you can take the home office deduction for that room.
Principal Place of Business. You must show that you use your home as your principal place of business.
Generally, deductions for a home office are based on the percentage of your home devoted to business use. IRS Publication 587, “Business Use of Your Home,” sets forth the requirement for qualifying to deduct expenses, how to figure the deduction, and what records you should keep.

Assuming that the business doesn’t fail, one of three things will happen next: The private company matures, issues an IPO or gets bought out.
What’s more, entities do not remain the same forever, such as when a private company decides to go public at a later date or merges with another firm. Part of a CFO’s role as a long-term strategist is to prepare for these eventualities and ensure a smooth transition.
Because startup and scale-up companies are evolving so rapidly, it can make good business sense for these firms to use a flexible staffing strategy — taking care not to over-hire or get bogged down in protracted searches for specialized talent. CFOs can help on this front, too.
Many finance executives today, at companies of all sizes, rely on a flexible labor force that includes full-time employees who are focused on critical initiatives; interim and project-based professionals who help to support them, usually for a finite period; and other specialized resources that can provide additional capabilities and perform high-value work on an as-needed basis.

This is your opportunity to blow your own horn. Impress the investors with what you and your team have accomplished to date (sales, contracts, key hires, product launches, and so on). You’ve likely mentioned bits and pieces of this early on, but this is the point where you create a full snapshot of your business.
But don’t just leave it at what you’ve done, be sure to speak to where you’re going. Show them a roadmap of next steps, additional milestones and even mention how funding will help achieve them.