Catherine Juon: Funding a Technology Services Business

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Pure Visibility has been seeking to finance its receivables since its inception. One of the key lessons learned from this experience has been that banks perceive businesses differently based on the banks' internal expertise. Therefore, it's important to search to find the right bank.

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Catherine Juon, co-founder of Pure Visibility, continues our series on Financing Innovation by describing her search to obtain bank financing using Pure Visibility's receivables as collateral. In our previous segment with Catherine, she explained her need to finance the float between when Pure Visbility renders services and actually receives payment.

At the time of the interview, it appeared that Catherine was about to succeed in obtaining bank financing, and we have word that she indeed has. This segment was very informative for how a start up owner perceives banks' decision criteria and how that perception influences their decision making. Highlights include:

  • Banks may essentially use the same surface criteria such as funding up to 80% of receivables, but how they perceive businesses depends significantly on their in-house expertise. For instance, Bank of Ann Arbor has a technology industry group making it easier for them to understand technolgy businesses.
  • Pure Visbility has sought bank financing since their inception three years ago and spoke with a dozen banks.
  • At the outset, Pure Visibility considered whether to go for venture or bank financing.
  • Pure Visibility chose to retain control of their firm and grow to the point of becoming bank fundable.

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2 Comments

E. Gordie Davis on November 16, 2008 5:00 PM
Listening to Catherine's and Linda's experience in trying to obtain financing for their company was eye opening and informative. I can see how finding a bank that actually understands your business and it's needs can make the difference in getting money and credit or not getting it. The idea of "bootstrapping" kind of hurt to think about, but it is what they had to do to get going. I wondered if they had working spouses to help in this area. I don't know if I could swing that. They did have an advantage of not having many fixed assets to invest in, but this also seemed to work against them in the fact that they did not have much collateral for the banks to recognize. A couple points that I liked was the monthly revenue produced from ongoing upkeep of client needs and the training being offered. By offering training to small business owners, they obtained a new customer that otherwise, may not be able to afford their services, and built a relationship that could grow in the future. A great source of "goodwill". The idea behind of social media is very true regarding feedback. Word of mouth is still the best advertising. I would ask them if their projection for adding employees is still the same in this economic climate?
Catherine's interview was very informative and really opened up my eyes to see what it is really like out there when it comes to looking for financing. I can definitely see a correlation between Catherine's business and the business that I am creating a business plan for in one of my classes. Both businesses are service based businesses so when Catherine was talking about how the bank likes it if you have fixed assets, how does that work with a service based business? I was thinking about the business I was creating and there are certainly no fixed assets there, so I can see how it would be a challenge to get financing from the banks. What also was very eye opening to me was the fact that Catherine spoke with about 12 banks in the area before getting the financing she need. I have no experience in the business field, so I guess I thought you just go to the bank and show them your papers and they give you a loan. Boy was I wrong. Now that I think about it, it does seem important, when looking through the banks eyes, to have fixed assets, have longevity, have a strong customer base, and strong receivables. I really think that the Bank of Ann Arbor did a great thing when creating their technology department for loans because it gives people like Catherine a chance to make their dreams of owning their own business possible. Last, this concept of "bootstrapping" seems terrifying to me. This is something for me to add onto the list of why I don't want to start my own business. It seems very scary to me to think that right now there isn't enough money to pay me but, maybe in the future there will be. I am the kind of person that needs guarentees in life and this just scares me. Overall, I am very glad I watched this interview because it taught me many things I was unaware of before. Best of Luck, Kelly Taff

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