If you were thinking about investment, due diligence, business or corporate research or useful information gathering, for profiles, connections or alternatives; To be able to be able to identify, facilitate, support or exploit merger and acquisition, takeover, or other asset acquisition opportunities; Or if you have or need seed or angel capital for small business or start up opportunities...

Great! You have

  come to the right place.

A wise investor seeks information before he invests.

So many people have neither the time nor the money to do it right the first time. Some do not even have the time or the money to do it right the second time. Those that survive have both the time AND the money to do it right the third time. Learning this way can be very expensive.

There should be no surprises. Each situation is unique. Due diligence is often thought of as crunching a series of numbers, based on certain assumptions. Few challenge the assumptions. History shows, for example, that many takeovers fail, not on the numbers, but on such things as a failure to meld different corporate cultures, or in the wrong assumptions about the market or other conditions.

We are information retrieval specialists. We use little known sources, great imagination, and frankly, lots and lots of down and dirty hard work to gather the information required. We CAN get the information. Often it is information to test the assumptions.

Want to know how many boxes of widgets your competitor is shipping? Boxes may be counted individually as they cross the dock, using satellite imagery. It is expensive, but possible. Usually there are better ways.

In one case, where a takeover of a competitor was being contemplated, and before the approach, a good estimate of the tonnage being shipped was needed. What later was found to be an astoundingly accurate estimate was obtained by simply measuring the amount of rust on a railway track spur leading to the plant.

Assignment motivations

While each assignment is different, usually the motivation behind our engagement falls into seven broad categories.

*seeking confirmation of assumptions about a rough or finished plan already in existence.

Our most common assignment. For example, a company wants to expand to the North American market. How best to attack the market? What are the government regulations, cultural differences, etc? Probably it happens, but never in our experience does the plan NOT change. Click here for example. IF you think you might have a problem, contact us.

*seeking data to implement an idea.

Will a new product fly? Is it better to Start from scratch, or to buy another company, or license? Why? How might it be best implemented? Contact us before you spend fortunes in development.

*seeking to confirm/verify some data already in hand.

Commonly used to check on some kind of story before further investment of time or money. Everything from background of principals, to market conditions and regulations, to reasonableness of balance sheets. If I lend Joe money, will I get it back? Due diligence would also fall under this heading. Contact us.

*seeking an idea within some parameters.

These assignments are often the most exciting, and the most difficult. Essentially they are someone saying, “I have a problem. Can you solve it?” (Often because they do not have the time to solve it.) It is also where one of our strengths comes into play. Imaginative thinking. If we cannot go over this particular mountain, find a way around or through it. If you want to sell iceboxes to Eskimos: Iceboxes may not only be used to keep the cold in, they can also be used to keep the cold out. Contact us, if you have a problem you have been putting on the back burner.

*seeking background/cultural/business practice/marketplace information.

In some ways this is not unlike “confirming data in hand” above. To illustrate the difference, we use the example of a new CEO, coming to a major competitor. What are his strengths and weaknesses, and how can we use this information to our best advantage? It is often used where the company is entering a new market, particularly where the differences are magnified by another language. It is our experience that it is most NEEDED where a company enters a foreign country of the same language. If you are thinking of investing in North America, contact us.

*seeking to obtain critical data not normally available.

99% of information is available, using a bit of imagination. Refer to the railway spur measurement of rust to determine tonnage shipped above. ‘Normally available’, in this case, refers to the average citizen, and their ability to retrieve, assemble, and analyze data. If you need information, contact us.

*seeking new ideas.

Not only are idea inventions possible, but, often ideas have been sitting around unrecognized for lengthy periods of time. The BIC pen, with its revolutionary new ball, sat around for years, simply because the common perception was that ball pens did not work, and nobody would look at it. We have the imagination, or can find it, for the invention of new ideas, and the research capability to find existing ideas. It is possible to create ideas on demand. If you have an ongoing or specific need for new ideas, contact us.

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