Pure Visibility

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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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Filed under: Ann Arbor, MI | Catherine Juon | Financing Innovation | Pure Visibility

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.

Download iPod Video (93MB)

Pure Visibility was fortunate to start with immediate cash flow from clients the founders brought to the business with them. However, rapid growth frequently requires financing beyond self-generated cash flow. We discuss discuss strategies Pure Visibility is pursuing to fuel its growth.

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Filed under: Ann Arbor, MI | Catherine Juon | Financing Innovation | Marketing | Pure Visibility | Web Communications

This interview with Catherine Juon, Co-Founder and Catalyst at Pure Visibility, marks the first in our series on "Financing Your Innovation". The series was sparked by the observation across multiple interview participants that they faced common problems in financing their innovative businesses.

Catherine introduces us to the issues faced in financing a services business. As we have covered previously, Pure Visibility is a three year old Internet marketing firm that helps its clients grow their businesses online. Like many services businesses, Pure Visibility has grown through bootstrapping. In their particular case, this has meant:

• They started with immediate cash flow from clients they had garnered in previous ventures so could forego bank financing.
• In addition to contract work, they established monthly recurring revenue streams that guaranteed a source of revenue.
• Working capital, the difference between payables and receivables, has been an issue as the company has grown. Pure Visbility is currently seeking bank financing to help with working capital but has also financed it through credit cards and loans from friends and family.

Linda Girard, Chief Visionary of Pure Visibility, outlines her plan to go from 15 to 25 employees in the next year.

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Filed under: Ann Arbor, MI | Defining New Markets | Linda Girard | Pure Visibility | Twelve Month Goals | Web 2.0 | Web Communications

In this two minute segment (download iPod compatible, 10MB), Linda Girard, Chief Visionary of Pure Visibility, outlines her plan to go from 15 to 25 employees in the next year. She will need multiple kinds of talent because optimizing web sites for high search visibility is a labor intensive process. Sites need "people power" to make their story known. Linda's highest objective is to grow a happy, productive environment where staff work with customers to achieve this objective.

Linda Girard describes how Pure Visibility uses training to help smaller companies engage in adwords marketing campaign while providing premium consulting services to larger clients. Pure Visibility uses social media with both groups to help manage word of mouth referrals.

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Filed under: Ann Arbor, MI | Defining New Markets | Linda Girard | Pure Visibility | Web 2.0 | Web Communications

In this 8 minute segment (download iPod compatible, 47MB), Linda explains how Pure Visibility uses consulting, training, and social media to help client achieve better Internet visibility.

Pure Visibility targets training classes at smaller companies. Clients can come in and takes these classes and then call with questions. Over time, Pure Visibility hopes that training can lead to more extensive relationships.

Social media (blogs and wikis) can serve both small and large clients by helping them manage word of mouth. One area where blogs and wikis can help is in mitigating negative word of mouth. Negative word of mouth from one dissatisfied customer may cost a business between 32 to 36 other customers. Pure Visibility has been in social media since January, 2006, and recently brought on Ed Vielmetti to help grow that practice.