Infinite Opportunities ÷ Finite Capital

To a hammer, every problem is a nail. Equally, to many fine entrepreneurs, seeing abundant opportunities for profit, the only problem is capital. Not markets. Or competition. Or industry cycles. 

In other words, good entrepreneurs usually plan big, to build big new businesses that will generate huge returns. That’s great. The only limiting factor they perceive is access to adequate capital to build big enough and fast enough to earn the largest potential return. The problem here, as we say in America, is that such an approach can be “assbackward”. Companies usually need to adjust their plans to the capital they can raise — not decouple the two entirely. 

We had a series of meetings this week with Chinese companies interested in working together with China First Capital to secure private equity funding. These meetings are usually long, detailed, and for the most part, highly enjoyable. We’re lucky to have so many outstanding companies approach China First Capital. They come from a very wide range of industries. For example, this past week, we met with one business in the high-tech synthetic fiber industry, and another that owns a large-scale sugar refinery. 

I’ve learned, over many years, first as a Forbes Magazine reporter and then as a venture capitalist, how to form a quick (and one hopes, accurate) assessment of a business’s potential. With both of these companies, the assessment is very positive. In both cases, though, the laoban clearly hadn’t thought very deeply about how much capital they both should and could raise. There was, at least at the start, this disconnect between the size of their plans, and their ability to finance them with equity capital. 

So, we needed quite a bit of time to explain things. Opportunities in business are infinite, but capital is finite resource. Investors want to achieve the highest risk-adjusted return possible. But, equally, they will determine how much capital to invest not purely, or even primarily, based on the potential return. They will also give strong consideration to issues of corporate control, valuation, ROI, even asset coverage. 

So, while investors will applaud a company with a solid plan to build a new division with annual profits of over $25mn within three years, they won’t be rushing to invest the $50mn that’s required to get there, if the current business is worth $70mn. That would require the investor, in most circumstances, to take a controlling stake in the overall business. The $50mn investment represents over 70% of the current company value. Few investors want to own that much of a portfolio company, even if they foresee great returns. 

There are all kinds of proven and effective ways to raise larger sums, two of the most common are using a mix of debt and equity, or staging the investment in tranches. The starting place for any business seeking equity finance is to ask “how much money can we best raise now?” rather than “how much money do we want to achieve most quickly our business goals?” The answer to the first determines not only which businesses opportunities a company can pursue, but at what scale. 

Capital – its cost and availability — is often among the last considerations for an entrepreneur. Part of our role as merchant bankers is to bring the entrepreneur’s plans down to earth, to keep those plans and the ability to finance them in harmony. The appropriate-sized tool for the appropriate-sized task. This idea is beautifully expressed by this ancient carved image of Chinese rice threshing machinery.