Make Your Pitch

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For our last pitch, I reviewed a bridal brokerage company focused on finding brides and grooms to take over abandoned weddings. This week, I review a pitch for an employee-owned assisted-living facility.

You can view the original video pitch and my review of the pitch below.

Here’s the pitch:

Here’s my review:

We all know that our population is aging and that services that cater to the elderly will be in great demand. AmericanWay is an assisted-living facility focused on meeting this need through an employee-owned organization.

This was an interesting pitch to me, one that differentiated itself from other pitches by telling a story. It opened with some statistics about the aging of the American population, but it never really addressed the scope of the opportunity. Instead, the founder (who didn’t introduce herself) used her own words, her employees’ words and visuals of the business to illustrate the opportunity and create an emotional connection with the viewer.

Another reason I liked this pitch is that the entrepreneur has taken out some of the risk for an investor or lender. The business appears to be a going concern — it has a team, and it even owns property. This engenders confidence regarding the entrepreneur’s ability to execute on a business plan (although the scope of that would obviously need to be confirmed through examining the financial statements).

Moreover, the entrepreneur offered a very clear ask. After introducing the business and the approach, she clearly outlined that she is looking to borrow money — not to sell equity. She even focused on the type of interest rate she is seeking, making it easy for potential investors and lenders to understand whether the structure and opportunity is a type that they would be interested in.

The concept of an employee-owned organization is one that normally would need more exploration. Giving employees incentives is a good thing, but it could create issues for a potential investor contemplating taking an ownership stake in the business. That said, since the entrepreneur is seeking debt capital (as opposed to giving up equity ownership), it is probably more of a positive than a negative. However, most investors or lenders will want to delve further into the employee-ownership structure.

Now, I would have liked to have more information, including the current size and profitability of the business and the potential for growth. I also was a tad confused about the concept of the money staying in the business instead of being paid to shareholders. But all of that aside, it’s an interesting market segment, a clear investment structure and the entrepreneur inspired confidence. There are details left to learn, but the story hooked me and I want to know more.

What are your thoughts about AmericanWay and the pitch? Share below!

Carol Roth is a business strategist who has helped clients raise more than $1 billion in capital. You can follow her on Twitter.

Article source: http://boss.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/18/pitching-an-employee-owned-assisted-living-facility/?partner=rss&emc=rss