Going Public?

p I find it to be a common belief in the small business community that small businesses cant go public until they have significant revenues, say something on the order of $10 to $20 million a year./p
pThis is totally false. nbsp;/p
pI have been taking Small Businesses and Start-Up companies public as a consultant for over 15 years now. And for 15 years I have been repeatedly asked in various ways Is a href=http://www.artfieldinvestments.com/raise_capital1 target=_blankventure capital/a truly available to a small business going public? We only have a million dollars in revenue. Arent we too small?br /br / My answer has always been and still is Yes, you can go public./p
pNo, you are not too small. br / br / A company doing a million dollars a year in revenues would be relatively easy to take public. Even a company doing a couple hundred thousand in revenues would be relatively easy. And though four or five years ago we could take a company public with just a business plan and no business operations, that scenario has become, admittedly, very hard to do, though still not impossible. br / br / It has become harder and harder to take a company public with no revenue and no business operations because the SEC and FINRA are rightfully trying to eliminate micro cap fraud, but yes it can still be done. If you have no revenues, however, you will have to have patience, some money in the bank to guarantee you can survive for a couple of years, and you will have to be making genuine progress on your business plan to show the powers that be that you are a real company and not just a sham set up for micro-cap fraud./p
pIf you are a small business and you dont plan to be mom-and-pop forever, then Going Public is something you should look into in the very early stages. Public money is usually a lot cheaper than private money.br /br / I have seen private companies who feel they are too small to go public give up half of their company for a small six figure investment. Sometimes companies with revenues in the millions feel they are too small and taking the venture capital route they raise ten or twenty million but end up with only five to six percent of the company in a few years./p
pThis kind of dilution is totally unnecessary. The same amount of money could be raised by going public while maintaining 60-65% ownership br / br / Of course there are downsides to going public early too, but most of those have to do with being preyed upon by non-professionals, fraudsters, and others who really dont know what they are doing. If you check out your advisers and get advice and structuring and referrals from professionals who know what they are doing, you can eliminate most of the downside of going public early. br / br / And if you feel you are potentially the next EBay or Google or Microsoft type of company, going public early on without venture capitalist could be worth billions and billions of dollars./p
pBill Gates only owns about fourteen percent of Microsoft. Imagine how rich he would be if he owned sixty percent! /p
pNow after the Can I really go public? type of questions the next set of questions I usually get are How do I go public? Are a href=http://artfieldinvestments.com/reverse_merger target=_blankreverse mergers/a beneficial? or I see ads that say – a href=http://artfieldinvestments.com/reverse_merger target=_blankBuy Public Shell/a – should I do that? But those are questions for another article. Stay Tuned./p
p class=articletext—————-/p
p class=articletextCharlene Kalk is a consultant that has been assisting companies going public for over 15 years. She provides full services for companies, large and small, that want to go public. Charlene provides additional information at www.artfieldinvestments.com./p