Introduction
Markets are overheated. Funds are being launched. Series A has now touched $50 million to start with for even pre-revenue start-ups!! In these frenzied times, the experts of fundraising are in demand. Magistral’s fundraising support services could be used at a fraction of the fund, to close the fund faster and in full.
Magistral Fundraising Support Services
Magistral fundraising support services help clients reach out to Limited Partners, General Partners, Asset Managers, and Business Decision-makers for business development support.
Types of Investors Reach-out for Fundraising or business
Limited Partners Reach-out
In this, the Magistral team generates the leads for Limited Partners, i.e., Family Offices, Sovereign wealth funds, pension funds, Treasury offices, Universities, etc. This list is then used to set up meetings with our clients who are General Partners like Venture Capital, Private Equity funds, or for service providers like Investment Banks and brokers.
Each lead comprises the name of the individual, their email IDs, firms’ names, links to their profile, their investment expertise, past investments, office address, websites, and board phone number. This information is then used to set up meetings with the client. Once the meeting is set up, Magistral gets out of the way for both parties to negotiate once the meeting is set-up
Once the reach-out for investment in a specific fund is done, further steps like CRM updation, design, and distribution of newsletters are devised to keep the leads warm
General Partners Reach-out
In this scenario, we are hired by Startups and established firms to raise funds from Private Equity or Venture Capital firms. Here the leads are generated for the PE or VC firms that specialize in the given industry. We reach out to investors specializing in SaaS, Healthcare, Tech, and several other industries all the time. The leads carry information like the name of the individual, email IDs, phone numbers, websites, investment specialization, past investments, etc. These leads are used to set up meetings with our clients. There is an efficient online tracker to see the status of each lead and where they are in the fundraising journey like the first meeting, second meeting, NDA signed, LOI signed, etc. The tracker also records the meeting notes and next steps
Reach out for B2B Business Development Support
If investors like Private Equity, Venture Capital, or Family Offices have B2B companies in their portfolio, and they have a board seat or get involved in active management of the firm, it’s imperative to focus on business development. Business development bumps up the revenue and enhances valuation. Magistral has been of help to investors in these situations too. We generate B2B leads in specialist industries. We also go a step further and try to set up the meetings for the business development teams. The support is also offered in design-related services like brochures, introductory materials, and presentations, etc.
Asset Managers’ Reach out
This forms the backbone of our operational support services to LPs like Family Offices or Fund of Funds, and Investment Banks that specialize in managing clients’ money. Here the reach-out is done primarily to collect all the documents for effective due diligence on the performance of funds. So specialized asset managers are reached out, all their performance documents are collected and then analyzed on metrics of risks, returns, volatility, etc. to arrive at a set of recommendations for the client.
Magistral’s Investors’ Database
At the heart of our fundraising efforts is our proprietary database of investors. We hit our database as a first step to raising funds. This database has been prepared and updated with the information that we have acquired from years of experience in fundraising for GPs, start-ups, and other firms. It has currently 25,000 + leads of General Partners and Limited Partners based out of the US, the UK, Europe, and India. This is also offered as a separate product to clients who are interested in fundraising at very competitive prices.
Rather than carrying a plethora of information on investors, most of which is anyway useless, Magistral’s database carries only the information that is useful for fundraising. That information is the leads of investors, their interests, their investments, and how to reach out to them. We keep it that way so that we could provide to our clients, what they need at an affordable pricing point
Here is the demo of our database.
Magistral’s Fundraising Package
Magistral can play a critical role in all stages of fund-raising. It offers its services as a package.
Elements of Magistral’s Fundraising Package
These services are
1. Fundraising Documentation: Whether you are a GP, a start-up, or an established firm looking to raise money, the first step is to finalize the documentation. These are the standard three documents which are Pitch Deck or PPM/CIM, Valuation, and 1 pager teaser. We prepare these documents at a lump sum fixed cost, with all the iterations taken into account. The service also includes polishing of the material, to make sure it is brand consistent and meets the global standards of marketing and design
2. Magistral’s Investor Database: Once the documentation is done, the next step is to reach out to investors and start setting up the meetings. Magistral’s investors’ database is the tool designed for this step. You could get the investors’ coordinates and write to them directly. If you can choose investors from all across the industries and geographies from its record of 25k+ investors. In case you still think you are super-specialized and would need far more niche investors, a customized lead generation of 500+ leads are also offered as a top-up
3. Specialized lead generation: For certain occasions like B2B business development, a specialized lead generation campaign is taken up
4. Analyst Support: For reaching out to investors, or for documentation or for attending meetings, taking notes, and taking care of the next steps from meetings, if you need any analyst support, that could be offered as well, which provides a flexible and cost-effective option to hiring onsite.
Magistral is Not a Broker-Dealer
Whenever we present ourselves as fundraising experts, we get inundated with broker-based assignments. There are several reasons we don’t get into commission-based variable arrangements. These are
1. The upfront investment of efforts: There is an upfront investment of efforts on our part for every assignment that we take up. This is either in the form of understanding the opportunity, refining the documentation to suit the need of investors or simply reaching out to investors. We can’t support any opportunity and put upfront investment specifically in the case where there has been no working history
2. Impartiality of our recommendations: We work with both GPs and LPs. We don’t want to take any opportunity to our GP and LP clients, where we have commercial interests in the form of brokerage fees. We pride ourselves in presenting the best opportunities that are carefully evaluated for fitments and returns for our clients. That is only possible if we analyze the opportunity impartially without any commercial interest.
3. Brokerage Fees: We are paid to bring in the money. Wonderful!! But who pays this money? This is one of our clients, who loses 1-5% of the investment right from the go!! We don’t think that goes well with our values.
4. Too many unreliable players: A brokerage-based arrangement could be offered by anyone in the market. They have no skin in the game. They are just evaluating the options out there. We don’t want to get involved in any deal with any asset manager that has no previous track record and is unreliable. If you yourself are not ready to invest a few thousand dollars in your idea, how do you want us, to get you millions?
5. Magistral is not in a position to negotiate: The legal responsibility and the negotiation is dependent on the parties involved. Magistral is just a service provider. Even if we do our best to get you, investors, there is no safety mechanism for us in case you start putting up conditions that spoil the deal. All our efforts are wasted and we would have lost the trust of another valued client
6. Lack of licenses: We don’t have any broker-dealer licenses and we don’t want to get into that business
All our services are retainer-based and after a successful round of fundraising, the fees work out to be a very minuscule part of the fund. We will not sign any success-based fee arrangement with a client, we have no working history with.
About Magistral
Magistral Consulting has helped multiple funds and companies in outsourcing operations activities. It has service offerings for Private Equity, Venture Capital, Family Offices, Investment Banks, Asset Managers, Hedge Funds, Financial Consultants, Real Estate, REITs, RE funds, Corporates and Portfolio companies. Its functional expertise is around Deal origination, Deal Execution, Due Diligence, Financial Modeling, Portfolio Management and Equity Research
For setting up an appointment with a Magistral representative visit www.magistralconsulting.com/contact
About the Author
The Author, Prabhash Choudhary is the CEO of Magistral Consulting and can be reached at Prabhash.choudhary@magistralconsutling.com for any queries or business inquiries.