Private deals

After years of struggling to raise money for biotech companies, I have concluded that every private deal must have a lead investor. The "lead" is the individual (and his firm) whose commitment persuades other investors to participate. Some combination of two qualities designate the lead investor (1) recognized expertise and success in the field which makes the deal credible and (2) sufficient financial commitment to the deal to get it done without most of the other investors. 

The majority of investors are herd animals who follow the smart money. Every private deal I have ever done ultimately came together when a lead investor emerged who could drive the other investors into the offering corral. Put another way, most investors will board the funding train only when they know it is about to leave the station without them. 

Laborelec is the Belgian laboratory for the electricity industry. It deals with measuring and studying problems arising with the production, transport and distribution of electricity to industrial and private customers. It has developed very diverse domains of expertise, such as acoustics, material characteristics, technical audits to telecommunications, vibrations monitoring, etc... 

Another approach to obtain an overview on chemical information or on information related to specified topies in chemistry, is to use websites that eontain link lists. These link lists arc usually provided by universities and private persons and are classified into subject areas, Table 5-7 gives an sample of the thousands of link lists in chemistry, and in addition some other valuable URLs that deal with chcmoinformatics. 

Because dealings in the stock of a hsted company are published, a healthy company engenders confidence that makes it easier to obtain other forms of finance. In the absence of a regular market, stock transactions are necessarily infrequent, and prices are liable to wide fluctuation, which may make creditors wary and possibly lead to bankruptcy proceedings. Such deahngs are usually referred to as over-the-counter and are confined to the relatively few specialist brokers who hold inventories of such stock and are prepared to make a market in them or are hmited to private transactions. 

Dealing with a poor contributor requires a combination of firmness and tact. If a team member consistently misses deadlines or produces shabby work, talk to him or her privately to try to find out the reason. Ask for suggestions as to how you or others might help. At the same time, make it clear that the team expects a certain level of performance and be prepared to replace a team member who cannot or will not achieve it. 

Postmoney value is the market cap after the funding is complete and is what new investors focus on. Postmoney value is measured against other deals and the likely step-up in value prior to the next funding evenf. As the biotech market heats up or cools down, comparable values rise and fall. During the venture capital stage, investors try to estimate when the company can do an IPO (their exit strategy) and at what premoney value, and based on this estimate, coupled with their target rate of refum, they discount back to what would be a reasonable private postmoney value. 

Conceptualizations, once arrived at, interact to produce new conceptualizations, new technology, from which, once more, new concepts and new needs may emerge. Television, for instance, derives as a concept from motion pictures and radio and, even though it was introduced only a comparatively short time ago, has rapidly become a central part of homes at all levels of society in our culture. Watching television has tended to produce a more uniform culture through greater exposure to common stimuli, has reduced the amount of time available for free interaction by members of any particular household, and has resulted in the creation of such implements as "TV trays" and "TV dinners" to accommodate the need for more time around the television set. Automobiles have made possible the movement to the suburbs, the virtual end of public transportation in many parts of our country, and a resultant increased dependency on private means of transportation. In its turn, this has produced a more mobile population, a proliferation of roads, a tendency to think of distance in terms of units of time, the destruction of the countryside, and an increased need to deal with air pollution. 

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