Nowadays banks are no longer interested in risky investments
Interview with Gilles Meyer, The Golden Egg

“We want you to succeed with your scale-up company. That’s why, we therefore provide you with the highly required information you need about on how to work with investors,” tells Gilles Meijer, co-founder and director of The Golden Egg. “It is very important to be able to understand the wishes of investors, since as they each have their experiences. Surely because only one or two of every ten start ups really becomes successful in the end. So you must be prepared as a potential scale up company, you need to be prepared.”
What’s is a Scale-up company? A ‘scale-up’ is an enterprise with more than ten employees at the beginning of the observation period and with an average annualised growth in employees or turnover greater than 20 per cent per annum over a three year period., and with more than 10 employees at the beginning of the observation period. When a company expands from 10 to 100 employees, to 500, 1000 and so on, companies they have specific requirements for capital, management, skills and organizational processes. This process can lead to ‘growing pains’ that can be easily and effectively addressed with professional help. “Do you want to be interesting to investors? Then you need to have yearly growth. But not every company wants to be interesting for investors. This is actually a matter of ambition,” says Meijer. Golden Egg is a company that provides practical information for the companies on how to work with investors and how they can best achieve to make their future plans.
Investors
Meijer: ”We provide the start-ups with vital information on the investors because we have an extensive network of investors. We also have a file on each investor on what their investors strategy is, what they like to see and what other criteria they have. We screen the company like the way an investors would do, so we are a first check for the enterprise but also the investors. We provide the start-up with ‘quick wins’ and strategic recommendations so as to be better prepared for the meeting with the investors. We are also able to introduce your company to a number of investors, if you wish, which is important because there are different kinds of investors. You have those that are going for the ‘high risk/high return’ and you have some that go for a longer time and might be willing to re-invest once more in the company. The high risk/high return investors want to see high profits with a multiple of 7 -10 within 5–7 years, and the others (venture risk) are willing to go for an incubation period of five to seven years.”
Business angels go for the long-term time investment
Nowadays banks are no longer interested in risky investments, according to Meijer; “Banks are willing to help companies when they’ve have proven they can survive. They can, for example, provide working capital but they usually won’t no longer take risks. If and if they do, it’s always in the short term. These are the traps you can fall into when you’re looking for money as a company. We try to give our clients transparency in how, banks and investors work, otherwise it will cost you lots of time and energy. It will take about six to nine months for a company to find an investor willing to do business with you. For companies with a long lead time — mostly technological or medical — mostly business angels can help you in the first phase. They look at the team as the most important criterion and if they believe in them then they are mostly willing to go for them.”
Read more about High Tech Scale Ups on this website.
The interview was made by Jakajima. For more interviews with speakers at Jakajima conferences, we invite you to visit Jakajima’s website

