XTML WINNING SECOND ROUND FUNDING With twenty staff and just £1 million of turnover, Internet Service Provider and Hosting company XTML needed to attract £3 million of additional funding to achieve its ambitious aims. The Brief The management of this small but growing company were 110% overloaded running and growing the company. Cash was tight and there were only two board members who were commercially oriented. The MD, John Ridd had been networking furiously and had some Venture Capitalists potentially interested but no business plan to demonstrate how their money might be put to use. Introduced through word of mouth, Phil Turtle was phoned by John Ridd late one Wednesday in July 1999 asking to meet the following morning. At that Thursday meeting, the brief was "We need a fully fledged business plan, backed up by research that shows how we get from here to £20 million turnover in three years and secures us £3 million in 2nd stage funding. And we need it for a meeting on Monday." The Solution Always liking a challenge (although a fully researched business plan in three and a half days is a bit much of a challenge) Phil Turtle and Jackie Thomas burned the midnight oil buying research reports and forecasts, meeting with XTML's sales director and financial director, producing diagrams, spreadsheets, charts and technology roadmaps - even inventing mission statements and advertising straplines along the way. The Results By 8.30am on the Monday of the first VC meeting, several copies of a highly impressive 90 page full-colour business plan were on their way from Turtle Consulting to XTML. Covering everything from market drivers and forecasts through the (then) structure of the Internet and competitor analysis through to XTML's forecasts and SWOT anaysis, strategic partnerships, channel analysis, network roadmap, management team and organisation structure and planning. These were backed up by a 40 page comprehensive set of financial forecasts - P&L, cashflow and balance sheets - for the following three years. Did it work? Well according to John Ridd, "Over the weeks that followed, not only did we have a number of offers on the table for the full amount we were looking for, it actually catapulted us into strategic relationship with Hewlett Packard. That gave us a mix of asset finance and equity warrants adding up to £8 million rather than the £3 million we had been looking for. It also gave us access to technical resources, and use of their channel of 100 additional salesmen. Success that we could only have dreamed of." "Like many small companies we were short of senior management resource. Worse than that we were growing at such a pace we couldn't even draw breath. Finding Phil Turtle - who literally walked in, understood our business within a matter of hours, backed up our gut-feel with real-world research and then put the whole lot into a format which sold the company 'off the page' was a life saver at the time. He more than helped us meet our objectives." The Conclusion This first project for XTML led to further commissions for Turtle Consulting Group through the following months. Some of these will be chronicled as separate case studies on this site. At XTML it was a whirlwind ride to success for John Ridd and his co-owners. By Augsut 2000, they had sold the company to Telenor - the Norwegian equivalent of BT - for an estimated £36million. Turtle Consulting sadly can't guarantee results like this on every occasion! But it gives evidence of the input that they can make - almost at the drop of a hat.