Keys to finding financing

Suppose an emerging vendor has a product and retail buyers have expressed interest. The only problem is, it doesn’t have the funding it needs

to expand.

That’s where Intersection Capital comes in. The Los Angeles-based firm, headed by Oren Klaff, helps companies obtain growth financing. “When companies start to create sales, all sorts of interesting things happen,” Klaff said Saturday at a workshop-style presentation.

Klaff emphasized that investors don’t care about the details of a company’s product. That may sound counterintuitive, but to investors, what matters is whether there’s a market and whether the product will thrive in that market.

“Your job is not to explain the product; it is to provide certainty that the future revenues you described are going to happen,” Klaff said. To accomplish this, Klaff suggested companies have a “pitch deck,” consisting of a brief description of the company’s current situation called a “window sticker,” the “big idea” behind the product, the financial opportunity, highlights about the company, forward-looking financials, what the company will do with the money and whom to call.