Investor Relations

2 comments ↓

#1 Morten Blaabjerg on 10.26.10 at 3:30 pm

Here’s the collected notes from this course, now finally extracted from Twitter thanks to their new architecture, which allows _all_ one’s tweets to be shown on a single webpage. Thought these notes more useful to be searchable here in this space.

Kaplak 3 Mar 08 : (course day 1)

» I’m attending a course on investor relations today in Odense
» Featuring Lynge Blak, Danish IR expert
» Key point : it’s all about making your business visible
» Get the message out, get it out in the face of investor groups
» Do research on what they need to hear? Why not wear white socks while you tell them what they need?
» Getting to know what the “screening process” is all about
» Financial communication is important… also need to use the press
» How to signal that you’re a company with a serious intent to raise some capital in your domain
» sustainability : socially, environmentally and economically… sustainability which increases the value of your company
» Of paramount importance : two-ways communication about information which relates to the value and prospects of the company
» No selective information… some gets to know something, others something else
» Consistency and continuity in communication… make decisions on a IR communications strategy and ambition
» A key part of IR : getting feedback, getting investors’ views and perception of the company’s management, performance, operations, prospects
» Detailed understanding of your stakeholders’ concerns, their likes and dislikes about your company and it’s path
» Just did a test on “selling points” for a potential Kaplak investor… why should he/she invest in Kaplak, out of the thousand startups?
» 1. we have a global market accessible via the internet, it shows explosive growth, i.e. massive economical potential
» 2. Lightning sharp analytical and strategical capabilities in our company.. a unique understanding of our customers’ key problem
» 3. We solve a real problem, i.e. a real “pain” for a customer group in rapid growth
» 4. The problem we solve will only grow bigger and more apparant with the present information growth online
» 5. Opportunity : it is the right time to do this. “Search” as a visibility solution faces great problems
» 6. No other company presently reads this strategical opportunity as well as we do
» We’ll see if these selling points change during this IR course…
» they probably will…. seems most investors could care less about the product or the market… I wonder why…

Kaplak 4 Mar 08 : (course day 2)

» product of IR : confidence in the business’ potential to provide a profit to it’s investors
» IR’s job is to sell this product to current and potential investors
» Investment Appeal… scalable business and competent/able leadership
» create investor confidence by telling the truth, the whole truth… goal is credibility, the truth is the single best way to confidence
» telling the truth is the most important builder of long term trust relationships
» which leads to long term support
» credibility must become a mantra
» Information reduces risk… it raises your value and makes new capital cheaper
» IR : provide investors with backup information, which supports the idea that they should make an investment in your business
» listening today to IR expert Lynge Blak : http://www.lyngeblak.dk/
» idea : buy up a complementary partner/competitor with an investor, to create better synergy and acquire ressources, while you’re at it
» we get around and back and forth to it all the time : information sharing, information sharing, information sharing
» Kaplak’s choice seems clearer and clearer : we’ll focus on using and developing open architectures all the way
» One key argument : open architectures are simply *faster* and more competitive in the environment we enter today online
» In this respect, being *afraid* of sharing information is foolish in every respect
» Just recommended Twitter to Lynge and my course teammates

Not sure I’d recommend Twitter another time as a notetaking tool – it’s simply too difficult extracting information from it again, and Twitter Search does not help. It seems to index only the most recent stuff, which makes it utterly useless as a tool for extracting data from one’s archives.

#2 Ildhavet » Blog Archive » Min økonomiske opvågnen on 07.17.11 at 2:04 am

[...] Oplevelsesiværksætter, og som bestod af lige dele projektledelse/virksomhedsforståelse og investor relations, det sidste anført af IR-eksperten Lynge Blak. Formålet med kurset var bl.a. at klæde de [...]