PROJECT FINANCE PROCESS
Understand every stage and pre-empt what may be required from you.
Project Finance Process Overview
At a high level, a project finance process can be divided into three stages:
- The preparation phase
- The negotiation phase
- The decision phase
During the preparation phase is when you develop the business case and pitch deck for the project. You will spend a lot of time ensuring that every detail of the plan makes sense, that the story flows, that you are familiar with every aspect of the plan, so that when you start talking to potential investors, you are ready to answer all of their questions.
The more effort you put into the preparation process, the easier the remaining two phases will be.
Getting a funding broker to help you during this phase, could save you a lot of time and effort along the way.
The negotiation phase starts when your business case is presented to potential investors. During this phase there will be a lot of communication between the different parties to clarify all aspects of the project opportunity.
If your project pitch survives this stage, it will go into the third and final phase, which is when the fund goes through its internal evaluation and approval processes, after which a final decision will be made about the financing of your project.
Below, we take a look at all the steps in more detail.
Project Finance Process Steps
Is there a real demand for the output of the project? What is your level of confidence around this? Without strong market fundamentals, your project is a non-starter.
Who are you competing with? What other alternatives does your target audience have? Why is your service/product better? What makes it so?
Are you able to tell the “story” of your project? Is it a story that resonates with people, or are you just interested in money? Remember, you are “selling” your project to potential investors, and every loves a good story.
- Will the project make money? How? When?
- If you are going for debt or mezzanine financing you will need some kind of collateral for about 25% of the value that you want to borrow. Do you have this? If not, can you think of a way to get it?
Funding brokers are incentivized to make transactions happen between projects and investors. A good funding broker can act as an ally to help you get investment ready.
You only have one chance to make a good first impression. Prepare well, and tell the story of your project. Connect with the audience, before you try and convince them of your projects financial merits.
Potential investors will always have questions during the negotiation phase. Make sure you are able to answer any and all questions that arise.
People invest in people. You can have the best project; if you as an individual cannot convey authentic trust to your future potential business partners, you are going to have a hard time gaining their trust to give you a ton of their money.
If the investors feel comfortable and positive about the project, they will carry out a due diligence on you, your partners, your company and on the project. Don’t let them find any surprises at this stage. Declare everything up front.
Once the due diligence is complete, the investor will go through an internal approval process. This could involve an investment committee or board decision.
Once the internal decision is made, the terms of the funding agreement will be finalized with you, upon which the agreements will be signed between all the relevant parties.
Upon signature, the only thing that remains is for the funds to be paid over to your account. The funds could either be paid as a lump sum or or in a pre-determined number of tranches, as agreed.
GET FUNDING READY
If you are not familiar with the process of raising capital, getting funded can be a long and painful process. Cut through the complexity and save yourself a lot of time and effort by using our services to get your project funding ready.
We can do all the heavy lifting for you and then introduce you to potential investors.
Use our expertise to achieve the following:
- Develop a value proposition and narrative that aligns with your personal and business objectives
- Build a financial model that resonates with the type of investor you are looking for
- Get introduced to potential investors
Having said this, our services are not for everyone. We only work with projects that we believe have a real chance of getting funded.
Someone’s desire to get funded is not the same thing as a having a viable project.
In order to understand if there is potential for collaboration, we have a pre-qualification process, which starts with the form below.
When you click the button below, you will be asked a number of questions related to your project. Upon submission of the form, we will revert to you within 48 hours to advise whether we believe that we could be of service in helping you to get funding ready.
