Our Review Process

Like most venture capital firms, VIMAC receives a large number of business plans by every means imaginable, including e-mail, snail mail, express mail and pony express. Many of these documents, unfortunately, are discarded soon after they arrive. That's because these business plans fail to consider what we (and presumably other VC firms) really care about when evaluating a prospective company for investment.

We hope this section will help you build in the "unfair advantage" that makes your business plan rise to the top of the stack.

The steps we follow
We follow a four-stage process when evaluating a company for potential investment:

	Initial review. A senior member of our staff will review your business plan and determine if it meets VIMAC's investment criteria. If the answer is "yes," we'll proceed to the next step.
	Proposal analysis. In this stage, we develop a thorough understanding of your company's business potential. We explore the company's opportunity and financial model and meet with the senior managers involved. At the end of this stage, a VIMAC partner decides whether to recommend an investment.
	In-depth review and terms. We work closely with your company in this stage to study its market framework and value proposition. We assess your positioning, go-to-market strategy, sales goals and financial model, as well as identify challenges, possible risks and potential rewards.
	Presentation of terms. If your company meets VIMAC's investment criteria, we develop an investment proposal and a formal term sheet that fairly values your business. After both parties have signed the term sheet, we begin final due diligence and create the required legal and transactional documents.

The entire process usually takes two to four months. In cases where we decline to make an investment at stage two or later, we will make an effort to direct your team to other sources of capital.