Flow Of Time

Professionalism

Often start-up companies are less structured and organised than their owners. This is natural since a young company has to achieve a lot during the early days of its operations. No one gives any rewards for having the top class internal processes and structures. Early results are the ones from which you're measured. Of course it helps the earlier you have implemented the processes and business conducts that enable to scale the organisation with ease together with the growth.

But how to deal with a case where the investors are the less structured ones? Usually owners can imply certain practices but how can a company to teach its shareholders? Mainly this is the issue with company secrets and handling of its proprietary information. Recently I found out a case where an investor made an offer for investment and the term sheet was exactly as discussed. However, the big surprise came from the fact that the term sheet was made by Word using the 'track changes' feature. The term sheet template had been used in the past for the previous deal and the deal terms were still readable... The immediate reaction is to expect that your deal terms will be distributed to the next potential deals the investor is doing. Very nice. Fortunately in the term sheet phase one can still consider alternative investors who can be more discreet with their investments.