Entrepreneurs & Start-ups

NAI was called by a young entrepreneur who had a $3 million offer to buy his start-up, and he was looking for guidance. After we learned more about his tech business and ran some quick valuation metrics, we suggested he consider not selling just yet. The first thing we focused on was sorting out differences and undocumented deals among the company’s founders, which then opened up the possibility of bringing in an angel investor, whom we attracted. With this new money, we hired some experienced managers who helped accelerate the company’s growth. As a final step in supporting our client, we negotiated a $5 million equity injection from a leading venture capital player. The company was now valued at $20 million, or $17 million more than just 10 months earlier, prior to our involvement. This engagement included: structuring and negotiating both debt and equity offerings; negotiating employment contracts; advising on overall strategy; sitting on the company’s board; and building internal capacity to negotiate.

We helped raise capital for this start-up Canadian venture fund. We also: resolved disputes with former partners that threatened the firm’s ability to move forward; partnered with new players to increase shareholder value; and attracted and vetted entrepreneurs for venture investments. This venture capital fund was later successfully sold to a much larger industry player.

A well-known, fast-growing company in the southern US was sued by a Goliath software corporation and found itself mired in courtrooms and legal fees. Then we were called. After two days with our new client and meeting their legal team, we developed a new influence strategy. We then trained the company’s top executives to execute that strategy through a brief, tailored negotiation class directly related to their legal dispute. We continued to quietly guide our client throughout the settlement process. The result: a deal that met our client’s interests extremely well given the challenging circumstances, while allowing the CEO and his team to focus on what they do best: growing their amazing business.

The dynamic founder of a fast-growing international brand had been frustrated in his ongoing efforts to liquidate a portion of his minority stake and to earn more money from the early-stage strategic investors who now dominated his board. We went to the board on his behalf, promoting his interests, and subsequently helped negotiate the sale of the company to an investment group. The result: our client was able to bank a considerable sum of money, while still maintaining a significant stake under the new owners. We negotiated his new role and higher compensation, hiring lawyers to support us in that process.

The owner of a small, fast-growing group of restaurants approached us to help her negotiate directly with the CEO of a large, international restaurant chain who’d expressed an interest in buying her unique restaurants. Over the course of a year, we advised on every aspect of the final sale, which included: guiding the owner in prioritizing her interests in selling or not selling; negotiating with shareholders unhappy with the business being sold to ensure they would approve the transaction once reached; suggesting prioritized improvements to operations to increase value; exploring a range of alternatives and buyers to maximize value in the transaction; negotiating directly on behalf of the owner while she focused on running her business and building its value; overseeing due diligence of the restaurants and final documentation of the deal negotiated; coordinating the legal teams involved to minimize costs and optimize outcomes.

We received a call from a small company whose biggest customer had just announced that it was walking away to a competitor, taking 90% of this company’s sales with it. We advised our new client on strategic and tactical steps to be pursued immediately, both at and away from the table. Once we understood its giant customers’ internal decision-making structure, our contract negotiation consultants led the client through discussions with key players there, re-establishing important relationships, while weakening those trying to push our client out. Within two months, instead of walking away, the CEO of the giant customer agreed to expand its relationship significantly with our client. We continued to work with this client on expanding its client base through new marketing initiatives so it would no longer be at the mercy of one or two big customers in its negotiations. We also thoroughly reviewed the details of its customer retention strategies and all of its contracts to make it harder for clients of any size to walk away again.

We started by delivering a highly informal one-on-one negotiation course to this successful female executive and owner of a high-profile niche brand of alcohol. Our goal was to enable her to negotiate directly with her husband, a lawyer himself, rather than involving third-party representatives on each side. Why? Because if younger children are involved, as in this case, we believe it’s best to have the two partners to marriage directly negotiate the basic terms of their separation or divorce agreement whenever possible to build their mutual capacity to deal with one another over time. The result: an outcome and ongoing relationship that far surpassed all expectations when we were first approached to help.