Investors
Are you a venture capital or private equity investor seeking to understand the quality and value of IP owned by a portfolio company or potential investment? Are you seeking to put the value of IP onto the balance sheet or in play for the purposes of an exit or investment round? Are you seeking to reposition a portfolio company between investment and exit to generate extra returns?
It often surprises us how even the most sophisticated of our clients ask the wrong IP questions when looking at a new investment or how and where to improve their IP position.
Maybe it’s a question of IP not being typically taught as a compulsory module at the leading MBA schools. Maybe IP is too hard to understand or too surrounded by incomprehensible jargon. Whatever the reason, most do not know the right questions to ask, and even when they ask the right questions they often receive inconclusive answers.
ipVA defines the right questions to ask, and then answers those questions. We carry out IP diligence pre investment, work with portfolio companies to optimise IP value in the holding period, and then enable those companies to present their IP proactively as part of exit.
We’ve listened long and hard to our market in designing and fine tuning our diligence product, its conclusions and its look and feel.
Knowing the right questions to ask before investment can be hard for financial investors or acquirers. ipVA provides transparent and commercially focussed IP diligence, asking and answering the right questions.
ipVA’s IP diligence methodology reviews the target across five areas, IP Strategy, IP Assets and Asset Quality, IP Risk and Risk Management, IP Licensing and Standards and IP Governance.
Our diligence process raises red flags as they arise. Our reports follow our IP Clarity™ business aim, providing clear guidance on your investment decision (with yes/no guidance if required) and also evaluating (and if needed placing a value on) the financial impact of any weaknesses or strengths in the target’s IP position.
We have developed a reputation for telling it how it is and not holding back in our assessments, whilst at the same time delivering practical and commercial guidance. Our guidance reflects real experience of the way in which the IP World and markets truly work.
Our reports also include our proprietary iV Ratings™ of the business in all five areas and provide clear statements of key investment conditions and post deal recommendations.
We work with the portfolio companies of VC and PE investors to optimise their IP value between investment and exit.
Working in our five core IP areas, IP Strategy, IP Assets and Asset Quality, IP Risk and Risk Management, IP Licensing and Standards and IP Governance™, we help create the best possible portfolio of IP assets in our client companies during the holding period.
Projects often start with the design of an IP Strategy, implemented through our IP Governance™ tools and processes.
And, if this optimisation does not go far enough in delivering the IP strategy, or cannot be obtained fast enough, we access the market for acquiring IP assets or rights in IP assets from third parties. Many of the World’s leading companies are freely and openly buying or licensing in IP assets, often for heavily discounted values. The IP world is open for licensing and this under-the-counter market can also benefit smaller companies.
How good is your business presentation at explaining the quality of your IP assets? Does it make those receiving it feel comfortable that you are properly thinking through IP threats and risks from competitors? Or, like most, is IP simply a postscript to your business presentation on slide 46 (just before your contact details) and with a list of patent applications?
IP often represents the core of business value. For VC-backed companies the IP may well have greater application and value than the areas from which revenues have been generated in the period to exit.
ipVA provides clients with visual tools, coaching, and training to allow them to tell a compelling IP story across all five of our core IP areas, IP Strategy, IP Assets and Asset Quality, IP Risks and Risk Management, IP Licensing and Standards and IP Governance.
By doing so our aim is to put these assets in play, to make them an integral part of the business’ sales story, and, if possible, to value the assets.
ipVA partners with leading UK IP valuation specialists Valuation Consulting to provide its valuation appraisals.
Please see our partners page for more details.
Our diligence target for our fund clients is to provide IP Clarity™ in investment decision making.
Our target by exit is to provide the best possible IP assets, and to provide the ability for the business to visually and verbally present its IP assets and, if appropriate, threats and risks, as positive elements of the overall business story.