Whether a company is considering a traditional IPO, uplisting from a junior exchange or a Reg A+ offering, every small-cap company listing on Nasdaq or NYSE faces a very different capital markets ecosystem than even just five years ago. Scrutiny from institutional investors on executives, on boardrooms, and on performance has never been more exacting. And, like in other areas of life, first impressions are critical. Ask any seasoned institutional investor, and they will say that newly public, small-cap companies often make four lethal mistakes:
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- Failing to adequately prepare for the rigors and precision of quarterly financial reporting and related investor communications;
- Believing that they have an extended grace period to acclimate to being an exchange-listed company;
- Looking, acting, and operating more like a “private company that happens to have a ticker symbol” as opposed to a “real public company;" and
- Failing at “Storytelling 101" (particularly technology and life science companies).
Third Creek Advisors strategically and tactically collaborates with CEOs and boards both before and after listing to exceed investor expectations. Our unique value-driver is that unlike virtually every advisor in the capital markets, we’re not speculating about how institutional investors will react to your critical decision making… because Third Creek’s founder was a small-cap institutional investor.
WE SPECIALIZE IN :
- Delivering the only buy-side driven, pre-listing website audit available in the market (i.e., your post-listing investor meetings will be over before they even start if you don’t understand how institutional investors analyze your website).
- Optimizing the manner in which your company is conveying its story to investors (again, we’re definitely not speculating about how investors will react).
- Uniquely analyzing board composition so that companies get a comprehensive sense of how institutional investors and proxy advisors will assess their corporate governance infrastructure post-listing.
- De-mystifying investment banker selections to minimize dilution and maximize post-listing trading support (i.e., choosing the biggest bank that shows interest is not going to benefit your shareholders nearly as much as the right bank will).
- Providing frank feedback on your company’s professional service providers (i.e., too many small-cap companies utilize law, audit, and investor relations firms that are not well-regarded by the buy-side, and they don’t find out until it’s too late).
- Educating CEOs and boards about what is actually expected of them post-listing.
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1-on-1 Investor Presentations: Seven Mistakes Small-Cap CEOs Commonly Make… That Drive Fund Managers Crazy
The goal of this free, 60-minute webinar is to provide some frank, differentiated, buy-side observations so that your company can meaningfully optimize future 1-on-1 presentations.
Though the webinar is geared principally towards public companies, private companies seeking venture financing will be able to benefit from the feedback as well.
If You Knew How Institutional Investors Actually Assess Company Websites, Yours Would Look… A Lot Different
Most officers, directors, attorneys, investment bankers and investor relations professionals don’t sufficiently understand how institutional investors review corporate websites, what they actually care about, and, almost as important, what they definitely don’t care about.
Tune in for this free one-hour webinar for frank, actionable steps to help your (or your client’s) website be an asset, instead of an exit ramp for institutional investors.
PRE-IPO BROARDROOM
REALITY CHECK
Post-IPO fund managers evaluate boardrooms much differently than VC’s and investment banks. To bridge this divide for pre-IPO companies, we developed a free, confidential, proprietary test that removes all the guesswork. Take the short quiz, and then discuss the results with someone who’s not guessing at all -- a former institutional investor who wrote the definitive book on small-cap corporate governance.
INDUSTRY TESTIMONIALS
I met Adam in his capacity as a teacher/mentor at the Nasdaq Entrepreneurial Center in San Francisco, where my company, Public Recreation, was part of the Milestone Maker program. We immediately felt like Adam was a 'secret weapon' as we sought to refine our capital raising presentation, because he’s a well-known, former institutional investor, who has literally heard 1000s of pitches. From a founder’s perspective, Adam is everything you want in an advisor: he’s a frank, personable, pragmatic expert, who is all about results. After only a few minutes with him, you’ll understand – like we did – why Nasdaq sought out Adam to help advise paradigm-changing startups like Public Recreation.
Jennifer Pattee, CEO, Public Recreation
If you’re a CEO, your board should be a decisive competitive advantage, but many see them as ornaments. We wanted to make that point as emphatically as possible to the attendees of our recent ‘Startup Exit Masterclass,’ so we reached out to Adam, since he’s a nationally recognized thought leader on this subject. Adam has a dynamic stage presence and made very clear with memorable examples what the upside of a real board could be. We all look forward to working with him again.
Benjamin Joffe, Partner, SOSV VC Fund & HAX Hardware Accelerator
As a teacher at the Center, Adam inspires founders to think differently about company oversight and gives them tools to support growth while creating long term, sustainable value to shareholders and stakeholders. Adam has a unique and passionate way of breaking down the principals of corporate governance through stories and experiences that highlight actionable steps any entrepreneur can take to make their business stronger and better able to overcome the big challenges that come their way.
Celena Aponte, Director of Strategic Initiatives, Nasdaq Entrepeneurial Center
HIRE TO SPEAK
Adam is retained to speak by corporate governance organizations, corporate boards, law firms, audit/consulting firms, investor relations organizations, and investor conferences. In the last several years, he has appeared internationally more than 100 times. As a former large-firm lawyer, operating executive, and institutional investor, his topics include: small-cap boardroom best practices, capital markets, corporate finance, hiring/managing professional service providers, small-cap enterprise risk management, and small-cap board composition.
Whether he’s sharing the stage with Fortune 100 board members and former White House cabinet members, or presenting global keynotes, Adam is invited back over and over again by iconic companies due to his well-chronicled thought leadership, candor, humor, and practical takeaways.
BEST SELLING AUTHOR
The Perfect Corporate Board: A Handbook for Mastering the Unique Challenges of Small-Cap Companies (New York: McGraw Hill, 2012), is the first of its kind resource created specifically for small-cap corporate directors. The Perfect Corporate Board addresses a long-standing void in corporate governance. Though nearly 80 percent of the public companies in the U.S. have less than a $500M market capitalization, corporate governance best practices have historically been one-size-fits-all. As a result, small-cap companies are routinely stymied by unique governance issues for which there has been no objective, practical guidance. Just as operating a $100 million company is a vastly different undertaking than operating a $100 billion company, governing the two different sized companies is different as well. By failing to collectively acknowledge this distinction, the historic one-size-fits-all approach to corporate governance has handicapped the biggest sources of American jobs – small-cap companies.
The Handbook of Board Governance: A Comprehensive Guide for Public, Private, and Not-For-Profit Board Members (New Jersey: Wiley, 2016) provides comprehensive, expert-led coverage of all aspects of corporate governance for public, nonprofit, and private boards. A collaboration by subject matter experts, this book combines academic rigor and practitioner experience to provide thorough guidance and deep insight.
