So, you’re thinking about going public and your company is too small to get an investment banking underwriter so you decide to take the bull by the horns and hire a consultant that can help you with a direct filing. You call the first guy you see advertising on Ad-words, he’s got a nifty site with all the up to date jargon and besides, he’s on the internet, he must be legit!
You call him and he’s gaga over your business. He loves what you do and thinks you’re the tops! Only problem is, you never told him about your business model, annual revenues, infrastructure or anything else that a seasoned facilitator will ask before they talk about anything even remotely close to going public. Before you can ask him questions that may challenge his comprehension of the industry or actual full service capacity, he mentions merging your company into a ‘public shell’ and having a trading symbol ins 3 months.
This statement stops you in your tracks, ’3 months?’ you say in bewildered awe. You’re salivating, begging him to part with more insider information that will help you achieve your goal in a fraction of the time and minimal expense. Then you hear the term ‘Pink Sheets’. I promise you that the next thing to come out of this self-proclaimed guru’s mouth will be a fee structure in the range of $250k to $500k. At this point, you should walk but you’re glued to the phone, your legs are paralyzed and you are about to fall for the biggest scam in the ‘going public’ industry. Get comfortable and buckle in, because this three month ride is going to last for a year before you find that you have inherited a useless shell on the Pinks with a stock value of .00001 cents per share and it will take an investor relations/road show equivalent to an act of God to make this stock even a .02 cent stock with a daily trading volume of, um well, how many shares can your mother buy so you don’t feel too bad?
I got an email from another ‘established’, ‘creme de la creme’ consultant with ’17′ years in the industry and blah, blah, blah. I get spam like this daily, hourly in fact. It only took one phone call to find out that these guys just started out less than three months ago, charged $300k for their Pink Sheet shells and were selling MTN and BG platform scams before that. They had never taken a company public, put a company through an IR strategy, evaluated a corporation for public acceptance as a public company or even heard of a PCAOB audit or S1.
It turns my stomach to think that jerks like this are popping up like hives on a nervous criminal’s neck but hey, live and learn. If you want to go public, look into a solid direct S1 filing, if you are in a rush and are a solid and profitable company, there are ways to merge into a public shell legitimately and have an amazing public existence with absolute profitability, but only chumps pay premium rates for a shell. The key is to sell your story to a ‘real’ consulting or strategies firm that will invest in your company so you don’t have to put up a dime. They will pay all the fees for going public or facilitating a reverse merger into a squeaky clean shell and pound the pavement with you post public to make sure that you’re trading at a steady volume and at the right price per share.
Take Your Company Public with a Direct S1 Filing or Reverse Merger, If you have a profitable company we may fund your IPO or Shell Merger No Upfront Fees