The Ten Questions Every Laoban Should Answer Before Seeking PE Funding

One of the supreme satisfactions of my work – and I’m fortunate that my job offers quite a few – is the time spent advising laoban (“business owner” in Chinese) on the value of private equity investment. These owners are entrepreneurs, not financial engineers. So, the world of private equity deal-making and finance is often entirely unfamiliar. As I tell these laoban, in my less-than-fluent Chinese, “you have already done the hardest thing possible in business, by taking an idea, adding little or no capital, and created in China, the most competitive market in the world, a successful business of significant size and fantastic prospects.” Compared to this, anything will appear easy, including closing a round of equity capital from one of the leading private equity or venture capital firms. 

Now, of course, closing a PE investment round is anything but easy. It involves, at a minimum,  a sizable amount of time, stamina, senior-level attention, perseverance, transparency, thoroughness and commitment to building a fully-aligned partnership with an outside investor.  I’ve seen it from both sides, both as a CEO and as a venture capitalist. The process can seem like breaking rocks with a spoon. 

But, it’s always rewarding and inspiring for me to see how quickly our laoban start mastering the intricacies of raising capital. They climb the steep learning curve fast. But, it is still a learning curve, and I’ve often made the process harder by doing an inadequate job preparing them for their first meetings. In fact, there ought to be a typically wise four-character Chinese proverb, or chengyu, to describe it: “Good students. Poor instructor.” 

I’ll admit to being a poor instructor. But, an improvable one? I’d like to think so. 

Together with my colleagues at China First Capital, I’ve put together a list of ten questions laoban should expect to hear in a first meeting with a PE firm. The purpose: to give the laoban a quick sense of the scope and rigor of the PE investment process.   

Of course, in any first meeting with a professional PE firm, there will be many more than ten questions. It’s unlikely any PE would ask all – or even the majority – of the ten on the list. 

But, these owner-entrepreneurs are all outstanding problem-solvers. If they weren’t, they wouldn’t be running and owning the sort of businesses of interest to good PE investors. 

So, the questions are really just a catalyst, to get the laoban to think about how a sophisticated investor will evaluate his business. In other words, to see his business from the outside looking in. This is like refraction, where shifting the angle changes the quality of the light. 

Here are the ten questions.  There are no right answers, of course. Only a right mindset.      

 

1.  How much of your equity are you selling?
   
2. What will you use this equity investment for?
   
3. When do you hope to complete this fund‐raising?
   
4. When will you IPO?
   
5. What are you looking for besides capital from an investor?
   
6. How do you think you can double or triple your profits?
   
7. How much is your valuation?
   
8. Who are your competitors and what are your competitive edges?
   
9. Can you please explain your strategy for growing faster than your competitors?
   
10. Please give me brief summary of the jobs and the past experience of the most important members of your management team?