融资尽职调查制胜秘诀：主动出击

    有些人可能会担心这会导致大量的工作最终被浪费，对此我可以给出三招。第一，不管投资方是否被到，都不要把太多准备好的材料留在手里。如果放聪明点，完全可以找到机会，将这些准备融入对话中。这招如果行之有效，就能扭转谈话的天平转，从风险投资人说“我问这个问题是因为我认为这对贵公司非常重要，你们最好能够拿出一个出色的答案”转变成“我与你们分享这项分析、背景研究和洞见，因为我知道这对我的企业非常重要。”

    第二，不管是否有时间谈论这些分析，你的努力很大程度上还是会体现在风投合伙人的投资备忘录上。我们每次在做出投资建议时，都希望我们的建议详细、深思熟虑，同时尽可能地有数据支持。如果企业方面能给我们更多有意义的材料，我们乐于使用，这样就能更好地行使代理的职责，更好地推介贵公司。需要确保所有真正对企业有兴趣的投资者都能看到你准备的这些材料。

    第三，可能也是最重要的，无论如何，你都得思考这些东西！一次运作有方的融资过程带来的真正好处是它会迫使你后退一步，不再只见树木不见森林。如果你认真思考这些分析，就会从中获得有价值的新东西，不管潜在投资者是不是会问到这一点。

    融资过程成败攸关，关乎贵公司的未来。绝不能听之任之，而应该主动参与，筹划好如何掌控谈判的过程。这样，潜在投资者离开时就能对贵公司有更好的了解，更加确信你就是他们希望投资的企业家。这会吸引投资人竞争，最终掌握主动。

    祝好运。

    Brad Svrluga是High Peaks Venture Partners风险投资公司的董事总经理。

    You might worry that this could lead to a lot of wasted work, to which I have three responses. First, I wouldn't advise leaving much of anything in your back pocket, regardless of whether or not you're asked. If you're smart about it, you can cleverly find opportunities to proactively slip this work into the dialogue. Done effectively, you can shift the balance of the conversation from the VC saying, "I'm asking you this question because I think it's critical to your business and you better have a great answer," to you saying "I'm sharing this analysis, background research, and insight with you because I know it's what's important about my business."

    Second, whether or not you spend time talking about it, much of your work is likely to find its way into an investment memo for my partners. When sponsoring a deal, we allwant our recommendations to be as thorough, thoughtful, and data-driven as possible. If you give us more smart stuff, we'll use it, and be that much better at advocating on your behalf. Make sure that any investor who gets serious about the business gets an invite to that Dropbox.

    Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, you should be thinking about this stuff anyway! One real benefit of a well managed financing process is that it forces you to step back and think about the forest for a bit, rather than that tiny piece of bark you've been staring at on that one little tree. If you're thoughtful about which analysis you choose to do, you're going to learn some valuable new stuff from doing the work, whether or not any prospective investor ever asks specifically for it.

    A financing process is a high stakes game upon which the future of your business ultimately depends. You can't afford to leave anything on the field. So go into the game with a plan of how to control the discussion. Do so and prospective investors will walk away understanding your business better, and with more convictionthat you are an entrepreneur they want to be behind. And that will lead to a competitive process where you end up holding the cards.

    Good luck.

    Brad Svrluga is a managing director at High Peaks Venture Partners. Follow him on Twitter, or visit his blog.