Vicinity Views
News, education and insights on investing in public offerings through the Vicinity platform and private early-stage offerings with VentureSouth.
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Profits, and Losses, and EBITDA…oh my!
One of the main financial statements you can use to analyze a business is the Profit and Loss statement (aka the income statement, the…
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“Going local” is more than buying a cup of coffee
I’m the type who turns buying apples into an arduous process. I’ll skeptically compare the fifty-cent difference between apples, assuming the proper scrutiny stance:…
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Investor Insights: Prophets and Pro Formas
Before we talk about the future, let’s mention a bit about the past. Business owners, sales leaders, finance executives and other stakeholders are all…
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The Who Economy
I’ll never forget pitching two angel investors with my first fully thought-out business plan. I’ve always been a dreamer, a creator, and an aspiring…
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Investor Insights: Debt vs. Equity Investments
First, the disclaimer: If you can’t afford to lose 100% of your investment, then you shouldn’t invest – hard stop. Now the TLDR: When…
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I Invested Local with Reg CF! Now what?
Two weeks ago, we discussed some reasons to invest local via the JOBS Act and Reg CF. Last week, we answered how to invest…
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Investor Insights: Robinhood & Vicinity
If we’re talking about new and innovative ways to invest, we have to talk about Robinhood. Robinhood has become synonymous with the democratization of…
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How do I invest in small businesses?
Let’s be honest for a moment. When we eat out, 99% of us (disclaimer: fake stat we made up) don’t go beyond leaving a…
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Investor Insights: Investor Accreditation
So, what’s an accredited investor anyway? Are you one? Does it matter? As to the first question, it’s pretty simple. An accredited investor is…
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Reasons to Invest Local with Regulation Crowdfunding
If you’ve read our stuff before, you know Regulation Crowdfunding provides a new-to-you business investment opportunity. An avenue to invest local that has been…
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Time Travel, Reg CF, And The Justice League
When you hear the term “crowdfunding for small business,” it might sound like a recent phenomenon. But put aside Reg CF and tech startups…
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How can I increase cash flow as a small business?
Spreadsheets, bookkeeping, cash flows, balance sheets, financial statements…it’s tough to manage your finances as a small business. You may be a passionate owner with…
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Exits: Taxes
So, finally! Our preferred shareholder has a distribution. Less than expected by the naïve optimists hearing the headline price, but still it’s nice to…
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Exits: The Last Complications
The pie is so close you can almost taste it. But wait a second! Escrow accounts In most transactions, the buyer will insist that…
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Exits: Dividing the Pie
As we’re close to the bottom of the waterfall, we are now including a third metaphor as we figure out how to “divide the…
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Exits: The First Evaporations
There are a few immediate claims on the water heading into the waterfall; some of these are fairly obvious, others are more complicated or…
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Exits: Waterfalls
Nothing happens in investing without flowery metaphors. When we discuss “exits” we are talking about getting our money back out of an investment. This…
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Exits: waterfalls, holdbacks, escrows, earnouts, and carry – some of the complexities of “an exit”
“Make Money. Have Fun. Do Good.” is the VentureSouth motto. This first part, Make Money, is (we believe) the key point of angel investing…
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Capped participating preferreds: the real impact 2: the grey zone
Following from the last post, there was a range of fairly attractive outcomes where the capped participation had an impact: let’s review the results…
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Capped participation preferreds: the real impact part 1
What does the capped participation preference mean in practice? Time for the promised spreadsheet: this sheet lays out the returns for preferred shareholders in…
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Capped participating preferreds: Are they unusual?
As we asked in the last post, are capped participating preferreds unusual? Well, it is option #3 in the term sheet – people generally…
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Capped participating preferreds: source infomation
Following on from the last post, before we unleash the spreadsheet, though, let’s cover where the idea of capped participating preferreds comes from. The…
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Capped participating preferreds: introduction
On a few VentureSouth investments this fall, we led the round (as we like to do) and agreed a term sheet that included a…
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Non-dilutive funding: wrap up
There are lots of other resources for exploring non-dilutive funding. While this is a bit outside of our remit at VentureSouth, we strongly encourage…