SIMS - Raising Start-up Capital

Thank you to Luke Morris of Scrutton Bland for his talk on Raising Start-up Capital.

The Talk:

You have an idea: but an idea is all that it currently is. You need finance to make that idea become a reality. Finance initially to prove the concept, and then finance to commercialise it. What do you need to be thinking about in order to raise this finance?

This session will cover the following main headings:

✔ The business, and finance, "lifecycle".
✔ Your "primary" financial statements, what they really mean, and what you really need to be thinking when you prepare them.
✔ An introduction to basic valuation concepts: Equity value, Enterprise value, Asset value, pre-money, post-money...
✔ Tax

About Luke Morris:

I began specialising in Corporate Finance having spent a year seconded to the Central Bank of Kuwait after the 2008 crisis. It involved reorganising a $3.5bn global asset portfolio held by a leading Middle Eastern investment house and I found it fascinating.

Prior to that I studied at King’s College, Cambridge and went on to qualify as a Chartered Accountant with PwC in the East of England. Wanting some international experience, I then relocated to the Middle East with EY.

At EY Kuwait I led a diverse corporate client practice and gained useful experience across the region. I undertook a number of governmental projects (including the aforementioned Central Bank work). I then seconded to EY North America to spend a year largely on PIE IFRS conversion projects in the Utilities and Mining sectors.

I returned to the UK in 2011 to build the corporate practice of a smaller firm in Suffolk, where I was responsible for its capital market and more serious corporate and transactional work, as well as its complex international assignments.

In 2017 I joined Scrutton Bland at a time of significant growth of the firm and a re-focussing of the business on technology and advisory niches. We are operationally very agile and have a clear development plan centred around fast progression of our people. We have built on recent regional growth in to Cambridge, as well as significant expansion of both our Ipswich and Colchester offices, consolidating a 100 year history in both of those towns and reinforcing our long-standing commitment to, and legacy in, Suffolk and Essex.