How to Fund Your Growth and Sell for Maximum Price

**James Carey** (0:00)
Some of the scenarios could be an IPO, you could be selling to a strategic. It's typically a pretty quick window, right? So once you raise growth equity, you're already a fast growing business.
You typically want to exit that investment in that three to five year window. The reason you would partner with a growth equity firm is not just for the capital.
You're going to partner with that growth equity firm because of their industry expertise, because of their access to new opportunities, because of their access to high growth talent, various different reasons. Growth equity is a great option for companies that are looking to really accelerate their growth. They may or may not need this capital, but I certainly think if founders are focused on an exit, are focused on a significant milestone or event, I would think of growth equity as a fantastic tool in order to accelerate the growth of their business.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:55)
Welcome to M&A Talk, the number one podcast in all things related to mergers and acquisitions. Brought to you by Morgan & Westfield, a nationwide leader in mergers and acquisitions for small to mid-market companies. We bring you exclusive interviews with industry experts in business sales, valuation, private equity, investment banking, and more. It's our mission to provide you with insight and guidance on how to build your company's bottom line and maximize value for eventual sale. Here's your host, Jacob.

**Jacob Oros** (1:27)
This is Jacob Oros, your host and president of Morgan & Westfield, a boutique M&A firm specializing in the sales of small to mid-size companies. And if you're considering selling your company and if you'd like to work with me throughout the process, you can schedule a free consultation at morganandwestfield.com. I'll have that link in the show notes as well. Or if you'd like myself and our team to prepare an assessment and valuation of your company, we can do that for you. It takes us two weeks to do. There's a very nominal fee of $1,500.
And that is useful for anyone that is immediately or in the next few years, considering selling their company and we value your company. We will identify any prep work that you need to do for sale and many, many other things. Again, I'll include that link in the show notes. Likewise, if you do own a company and if you'd like us to send you out a copy of one of my two recent books, The Art of the Exit or Acquired, I can gladly do that. You can send an email to podcast at morganandwestfield.com or we also have those links to download in the show notes for free as well. Last but not least, we have produced a course on selling a business. It's called The Art & Science of Selling a Business. It's eight or nine lessons long.
We'll have that link in the show notes as well. That's good for any owners that are new to the process and they'd like a full holistic explanation of the full sale process and many of the things that can potentially go wrong and how you can prepare for the process. Now on to today's show, we're going to talk with James Carey. He is with a family office. We've had him on the show several times in the past. We're going to talk about growth equity and many of its components. If you're considering growing your company and you have a high growth company and you'd like to raise some equity to facilitate that grow, then this show is for you. James, welcome to the show.

**James Carey** (3:30)
Thanks, Jacob. Good to be here.

**Jacob Oros** (3:31)
We're going to talk about the components of growth equity to the listeners. We did a previous show on growth equity. I guess we call that part one where we covered growth equity in general. Today, we're going to talk about the components of growth equity. But for those that haven't listened to that show, James, again, what is growth equity in a nutshell?

**James Carey** (3:50)
I mean, in a nutshell, Jacob, it is capital to grow and expand. It's typically any type of form of private investment for fast-growing, established companies that need capital to grow. And it's not a restructuring, it's not debt. Typically, it is typically minority or structured majority ownership.

**Jacob Oros** (4:09)
And what are the different components of growth equity?

**James Carey** (4:11)
So there's a couple. There's a handful that I'd like to cover on today's episode. I think let's talk about ownership state, the types of companies that growth equity are applicable for, the use of capital.
We can talk about leverage and the investor involvement and risk profile and exit strategy.