Time for the tutorial

I had a coffee with a fellow this am who was looking for some career advice about the various financial sectors in Canada: venture debt vs. venture capital vs. merchant banking vs. investment banking. When we talked about merchant banking, it became clear to me that the industry knowledge that we take for granted isn’t always well understood, even with CA/MBA/CFO folks….

So, over the next few days, we’ll be posting some basic guideposts for entrepreneurs, covering such topics as:
– business plans, and why we need key information up front
– venture debt pros and cons
– how operating lines and SR&ED loans work
– term vs. amortizing debt deal structures
– cost of capital
– structural choices
– using an agent to raise capital
– benefits and drawbacks of covenants
– when things don’t go well

This blog was built to serve as a forum for information sharing, and these topics are generally the issues that come up most frequently. Hope you find them helpful over the coming days.

MRM