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What are the risks associated with private equity finance and how can investors be successful? 

Understanding Private Equity

Private Equity Finance refers to the initiative of raising capital from external investors and in turn rewarding them a share of the business.  It consists of equity shares of companies not registered and traded on a public stock exchange.  There are various ways of investing in private equity – leveraged buyouts, venture capital, growth capital, distressed investments and mezzanine capital.

Private Equity Finance: Risk Capital

Private Equity is often considered as “risk capital” due to its inherent nature and characteristics. In the case of private equity, operational issues make it hard to determine who ultimately is responsible for economic risk that arises out of a leveraged buyout.  These are the result of using increased complex credit derivatives. The chances of these derivatives not being confirmed in a timely manner is very high and this may lead to more amount being traded than underlying assets. Private equity finance is also considered a risk as a conflict of interest may arise between the responsibilities the firm has towards itself and the companies owned by the funds.  Private equity investors are faced with huge turmoil along their way and need to be more prudent while making, managing and exiting investments.  It is always important to have an entrepreneurial spirit when taking up such high risk ventures.  Private equity investors spend tremendous amount of their time and energy looking for good business investments and enable them boost their performance.  Entrepreneurs always believe in the concept of more risk equals more return! 

Successful Private Equity Investing

Private Equity Finance, with its inherent risk characteristics can be a successful venture by knowing what you’re getting into. It is essential to be in places where successful entrepreneurs are.  Success breeds further success, after all.  This will give investors valuable insights and gain knowledge of new companies. They are masters in their field and just being in their presence will enrich investors with a lot of information.  Developing an exit strategy is crucial to the success of private equity finance. The investor should have a liquidity event in place and make sure it brings rewards.  A very important aspect is diversification.  When there is effective diversity in the portfolio, small losses can be negated by higher profits in other investments and lead to long term success. With all these tips and insights, private equity finance can be highly rewarding for an entrepreneur, both as an investor as well as a business owner seeking investment yourself!

DealMarket’s online platform is meant to help the private equity world become simpler. Private Equity Finance can be successful if parties meet each other and close profitable deals. Powered by cloud-based technology, this onlie platform is considerably more efficient than using e-mail and Excel spread sheets.

Deal flow software is integral to successful deal flow management.  The software can serve both sides of the investment coin:  investors as well as those seeking capital.

Deal flow software is to the private equity market what peanut butter is to jelly.  You can’t put a PBJ together without both, and deal flow software is a major ingredient when putting deals together in the private equity market.  If the PBJ analogy doesn’t work for you, you might try thinking of deal flow software as the “yin” to the deal’s “yang.”

Successful Deal Flow Management

No matter what crazy analogy you come up with, the fact remains that deal flow software is an integral factor in successful deal flow management processes.  The main function the software serves is to monitor deal flow for a variety of investors:  private equity individuals and firms, as well as other investment groups.  Deal flow is a complex process with many individual pieces of data necessary to analyze viability as well as performance and deal flow software has the capability to integrate this data effectively.  For example, deal flow software provides the ability to quickly analyze the amount of capital released per individual investments and predict the likely return on those investments.

However, deal flow software serves a wide variety of individual functions which can then be translated in a clear picture of the status of a private investor’s or group’s investments as a whole quickly and accurately.  Another important benefit of deal flow software is error reduction.  Human error is vastly reduced as the software performs all calculations.  Additionally, we all know potential deals have a life of their own and often require quick action.  Deal flow software facilitates the ability to generate just-in-time reports and analysis needed to make fast, but sensible, decisions.

Deal Flow Software for Entrepreneurs

On the other side of the coin, deal flow software can also be utilized by entrepreneurs presenting investment opportunities to investors.  Especially for novice entrepreneurs, deal flow software can help ensure that presentations include not only the precise information investors want to see, but in the format they want to see it in.

Deal flow software can also include extremely powerful operational functions designed to run scenarios that can produce detailed predictions as to whether or not the business or product is worth the risk of investing in.  While it would be foolish to rest every investment decision on the software analyses alone, the software does provide a spectrum of best as well as worst case scenarios allowing a deeper examination to determine if a venture represents viable risk.

Not all deal flow software programs are created the same.  The onus is on the investor to ascertain their specific needs and match these specifications to available software.