Rise of the Investment Readiness Programs
BY: ANA BARJASIC
Every several years there is a new buzz word in the entrepreneurship world, and the time has come for investment readiness. This particular concept has emerged with the help of the policy world, and various international organisations are using it more and more frequently in their reports and white papers. So what is investment readiness?
When entrepreneurs have a project or service covering a market gap, good team to execute it, technology that works and has all the necessary proof, references and licences, business models and financials that make sense, and understanding of basic investment vocabulary as well as their own needs and terms of investment, we call them investment ready. The same concept can also be applicable to prospective investors, who are high-net worth but have no investing experience, or have been investing in “traditional” businesses, such as real estate.
Investment readiness programmes are like a genie in the bottle, everyone talks about them and everyone organises them, but very few have really benefited from it. As the OECD Discussion Paper on Investment Readiness Programmes suggests, many investment readiness programmes have failed to increase the number of investment deals, since they focus on generic input and presentation skills, and lack critical diagnostic and business support components.
For an investment readiness programme to be successful, it needs to contain a service catalogue of a number of different and complex, both online and offline activities over a longer period of time, with evaluation mechanism on both investment and fundraising side. Complex investment readiness formats require effort and are expensive to implement, as well as attracting active and serial entrepreneurship and investment experts can be tricky.
Old-school formats are not interesting for entrepreneurs and investors anymore, the market is ready for more innovative and interactive programmes, and more importantly, more tangible and impressive funding results translated to numbers, especially in Europe. On the other hand, entrepreneurs are hungry for more substance and knowledge, which can’t be provided by just any random entity with flashy marketing.
There is a clear tendency coming from the public entities, which often waste a lot of money in the field, to shape more serious projects, entrepreneurs and investors. It would be interesting to have monitoring mechanisms in place as well publicly available data about the results of different publicly funded investment readiness programs. Or is transparency too much to ask?
If you are interested in hearing more about Connectology’s programmes on investment and market readiness, get in touch via [email protected]
