Dolphin's Corporate Development Process
For Growth Stage Companies

Problem Statement

Companies emerging successfully from the startup phase often fail when entering mainstream markets due to faulty strategy or inadequate breadth of products or distribution channels required to meet customer needs.

Most companies that emerge successfully from the startup stage do not have an internal corporate development group that can adequately define and implement new strategic initiatives needed for continued growth and survival. Further, building an in-house group may be cost and time prohibitive.  In-house corporate development groups often lack the objectivity needed to recommend significant changes in strategy to the CEO.

Practice Overview

What We Do -- Dolphin Ventures offers its portfolio companies a complete corporate development service to develop and implement a strategy that will accelerate the growth of shareholder value and carry the company to its next inflection point. This service can be offered on a very cost effective and personalized basis.

How We Do It -- Dolphin Ventures assists our clients by designing custom hands-on programs focused on accelerating growth. We do this through a six-phase corporate development program:

I.  Strategic Assessment and Positioning

We thoroughly review your business plans, operations, models and strategy to assess your on-going operations and markets. Through interviews, planning reviews, and our own network of market and domain experts, we can assess your business and make solid recommendations on where to focus your resources and energies.

II.  Internal Growth Options

We work with your team to assess your growth opportunities to determine whether you have the resources, methodology and capabilities to attain those goals. We summarize strategy options including organic growth, market segment/geographical expansion, derivative product development and strategic partnering.

We can also assist portfolio companies with strategic partner, sales channel and customer introductions and development as appropriate.

In addition, we can offer an initial assessment of potential capital markets/funding strategies including recapitalization, splits, private equity, secondary offering, etc.

III.  Management Team

We can assess your current and future human resources needs and assist in identifying suitable candidates that are needed to build out the team.  Referrals to recruiting sources and executive recruiters can be provided.

IV.  Investor Relations Assessment

We can help you assess the current state of investor/shareholder relations and awareness including:

Review literature, presentations, press releases, external reports and investor relations programs.

Identify and assess investor relations strategy/positioning options within your industry

Review valuation scenarios considering overall industry landscape, structure and dynamics

V.  External Growth Strategy

A key value of our program is to look for external growth opportunities. We can identify and assess external growth opportunities with :

Products and technologies complementary to your current solution set

Companies as acquisition targets that have complementary products, technologies, market position or sales channels.

We help you prioritize potential acquisition target lists based on mutually agreed criteria, as well as prepare detailed background information on your top priority acquisition targets.

VI.  Merger/Acquisition and Financing Implementation

We can provide significant assistance at brokering deals, financing your acquisition plans and helping you integrate operations once an acquisition has closed.  Our team can assist in:

Structuring, negotiating and executing funding/capital markets strategy.

Structuring, negotiating and executing other business restructure or merger/acquisition transactions.