Q&A With Meeting Street

Q. What is Meeting Street?

Our official DBA (doing business as) is The Meeting Street Group.

The Group side are the individuals sourced to work on particular projects.

Meeting stand for meeting knowledge at the intersection of projects.

Street is intended to convey a ground up, boots on the ground company.

Q. How did Meeting begin?

After completing my MBA, my investor inquired about an investment opportunity regarding a land and building deal.

He desired to build a restaurant on that parcel.

I performed a comprehensive analysis quantifying costs and break even requirements under assumptions I had closely researched.

I also uncovered biohazard issues that would be expensive to clean up prior to building. These costs were significant.

Despite an offer of equity in the deal should it move forward, I rendered a “No-Go” opinion.

Impressed by the integrity to turn the deal down, he began to commission additional projects, and a relationship was born.

Q. How do you work?

One project at a time. Depending on the scope of work I will outsource certain areas to experts in their field.

Papers, reports, calculations, presentations may come from me, but they are a team effort.

Q. Explain Value Add?

In simple terms, we aim to save you more money than we would charge you.

In addition, the opportunity cost of time saved by managers can be significant. Saving you time while we work to save you money, or identify factors that may influence value, for better or worse, informs you to implement the necessary changes, make investments, or not, … adds up to a significant net value gain.

Q. What industries do you specialize?

That depends. The short answer is just about any industry.

But, if we don’t understand the scope, or we don’t think there is value to be added, we will pass.

In general, businesses that adhere to GAAP accounting principals allow us assess conditions because that data is uniformed.

We can benchmark your data (performance, payroll, expenditures, ratios) against industry data and ascertain your performance relative to industry. Other factors play a part as well.

Business that don’t adhere to GAAP… well, … we start there.

We’ll look at your cash handling and accounting procedures and (attempt) to correct them. Sometimes we plug and play your data into our own GAAP model so that we can accurately understand your business. The idea being, you have to know where you are (financially) before you can decide on a direction to go.

We have worked in agriculture, digital media, hospitality, healthcare, publishing, technology, hospitality, real estate - site location analysis, construction budgeting, commercial construction, leasehold analysis, owner representation. The list goes on.

Q. Do you represent investors and businesses seeking investment at the same time?

No. We act as a fiduciary for our client; for whatever side of the deal they are on. Buy side or Sell side.

The only time we work with both may be for an arbitration or mediation over a partnership dispute. We’ll try and solve the dispute as an objective 3rd party. The value here is avoiding litigation.

When raising money, we help prepare -not only a deal structure, but assess the conditions of the company and advise whether or not the firm is likely to obtain a successful capital raise. Often, valuation analysis comes into play. We advise what we think an investor will might offer and why. We have witnessed many deals tank over valuation disagreements - only for the business to come back to the table at a later date with hat in hand.

For investors, we examine the offering - be it a proposal, pitch deck, full business plan.etc

We’ll assess management, economic conditions, timing, credit, capacity, collateral, and several other factors that contribute to an informed decision. We will render either a “no-go” or a “go” (invest) opinion. Often we recommend amending the terms of the proposed deal.

It is important to note: We typically render a no-go opinion for about 90-95% of all deals representing buy side investments.

Thats not to deny access to wealth capital for 90% of startups, but, to help ensure the other 10% are successful, and will generate returns to the fund. When we add more money to an Angel or Seed fund, that, in-turn, will expand capital and broaden access to it

Q. How many deals have to you done?

We have affected between $20m - $30million in Seed, Angel Capital, and Private Equity Capital transactions in addition to follow on transactions between direct ownership, buy sell investors, and early phase clients.

We have worked with more than 3 dozen entities, examined hundreds of deals, proposals, and projects. In addition we have owned several businesses and negotiated direct buy sell agreements directly.

Q How do you get deals done.

We start with the service or product always, and work backwards. If there is no product or service worth investing in, or raising capital for, we can stop right there.

If the product or service is has legs, we work on shaping the value proposition of the company, highlighting the brand, identifying value drivers and optimizing them. We help prepare a pitch deck and often bird dog potential investors buying in that market.

On the investment side. Same. We start with the product or service, then management, then organization, on down the line. We examine the proposal and re-model the calculations - with an emphasis on assumptions used to generate forecasts. We look at the deal holistically and present findings accordingly.

Q. What are your fees.

Typically project based. We outline a scope of work and deliverables based on an initial needs assessment consultation.

We propose a fee simple approach. If we incur any costs, we’ll add those plus a slight market to procure them.

For example, we wrote a CIM for a company desiring to offer equity to the public in exchange for ownership. We proposed a fixed fee plus a cost plus arrangement to coordinate with a graphic art shop. The art was to give it a professional and sophisticated look. Our fees all-in, were significantly less than any other CFO or Broker Dealer who offers the same service. We know because we checked. Extensively.

Q. Do you sign NDAs?

Typically not. No one is going to work harder on your idea than you are. If you are worried that someone might steel your invention, we suggest getting farther along before you outsource it.

You will always have competitors or companies who will ultimately infringe on your idea if its good enough. The key to any great idea is execution. Without execution, your idea may just be a day dream.

Q. Why do you only work with 1 client at a time?

To dedicate full attention. The Meeting Street Group consists of experts in their field or in academia, and coordinating those efforts requires time and dedication also.