The business partner scheme
Looking for more than just investment? How about a full business partner, sharing the risk, the workload and the reward.
The elevator pitch
You have an awesome product. But there's everything else leaving you divided too thin, pulling you away from where you are most valuable to your business.
Partnering with us gives you a full business team at the flick of a switch - tech, marketing, investment and expert business advice, all taken care of. That other stuff is suddenly our problem.
Now you have your time and energy back for where you are most valuable - growing your business.
Our current status…
As things stand, we are not looking for new businesses to invest in or new partnerships. Should this change, we’ll keep you posted here.
The Concept:
You are awesome at your product and you know your clients inside and out. But then there’s all that other stuff always pulling you away from why you started the business in the first place.
We happen to be awesome at all that other stuff with the experience to boot - marketing, tech, business know-how, investment and funding, business strategy, productivity and much, much more. In fact, we love that side of business.
And, we’ve been there before, with a track record of success with startups and established businesses alike.
So, we form a business partnership with you. We share the risk, workload and reward. And we can even provide the financial investment too - whether it’s startup funding or investment for an established business.
Now you can get back to what you are awesome at - your product and your clients. We’ll worry about all the other stuff for you.
Your new business partner, with a full business team included.
A business partnership with SquareFish gives you more than just a new business partner. You get a full business team, at the flick of a switch. A highly effective marketing team focused on your business from day one. A tech team here, to make light of all the technical challenges for you. Expert business advice and guidance. And much more.
We are business investors too, providing startup funding to new businesses and angel investment to established businesses alike.
You have an amazing product and know your customer inside out. With us on board, you also now have an expert in everything else needed to unleash your business’ true potential.
A business partnership with SquareFish allows you to get back to focusing on what you are best at - growing your awesome business.
Who we partner with:
Start-ups
We’ve worked with many businesses from when they were little more than an idea in the creator’s mind. You don’t need to be trading yet for us to get involved.
Start-up funding, new business advice and more, as we lead you through the whole process of becoming a successful entrepreneur.
Right from the very start, we are there to help you turn a great idea into a successful business model. Then we use our business and marketing skills to strap a jetpack onto it.
Established businesses
We have a proven record of helping established businesses to pivot into new markets, design new products and escape that dreaded plateau.
We can also help with the business loans and investment needed to expand your growing business.
If your business needs an experienced partner to roll up their sleeves and get stuck in, we should talk.
Running a business: the land of 1000 distractions
Your business passion
Most people start a business because they are truly an expert in delivering their product / service. It’s their working passion, their reason to jump out of bed in the morning.
But, when you start running a company, providing the product and dealing with your customers is just a small part of your day.
And, then there’s everything else…
Marketing. Tech. Recruitment. H.R. Accounting. Business Strategy. Rivals research. Grants, loans and government supports. The list of other jobs is never-ending.
These kinds of jobs might not sound interesting. But, for most business owners, mundane jobs like these will always be there to pull you away from what you are best at.
Then there’s the money side of things - getting new business loans or investment for business expansion. Great ideas need funding.
Get your time back to focus on growing your business
The Partnership Scheme is for those people who want to spend their time focused on the core business - their product, their clients, their staff. Improving and growing what really matters. You focus on your core business, and we can worry about all the other stuff.
Remove the learning curve
We’ve been there before, too. All the research is done. We’ve even collected a full business team with all the skills on hand. We bring complete business experience and know-how to your company.
We don’t need to research the best way to build a website and put it to the top of Google, we’ve done that before. And, we know how the cross-border EU VAT rules work already. And we know how to make recruitment both fast and effective, along with the best systems to do the countless employers returns to revenue.
A team of experts, with a track record of success
Over the years we’ve assembled a team of experts here at SquareFish, and have contacts to bring in the other skills you might need too.
Particular passions of ours are marketing, tech and business productivity. That stuff most business owners find little more than painful, we love. And, we’ve incredible results to back it up too.
Because an amazing product is just one piece of the puzzle in making a business succeed.
It’s our job to bring all the other skills and resources to allow your business project to reach its true potential.
Why businesses come to us
Every partner is unique, and we design a unique relationship tailored to the needs of their company.
Most partners, though, have come to us because they are looking for our expertise in at least one of these areas.
Marketing
Marketing is kind of our thing. In fact, we love it, especially digital marketing. Our knowledge of SEO and dominating the Google search results is market-leading.
It can be our job to make your phone ring, and your inbox overflow. The work and the investment to make that happen - that’s all our problem now.
So you can focus on your amazing product and knowing your customers inside and out.
Tech
As businesses grow, their systems need to grow too. That’s where we excel.
We know our partners inside and out, and set up all the IT systems and build all the custom software needed to make sure their systems work for them, not the other way around.
Booking systems, payment systems, accounting, CRM and much more all rolled into one awesome package.
Business Advice and Planning
This isn’t our first rodeo. Any new project can have endless things to think about. How to prioritise, or even where start can appear fairly full-on.
We’ve been here before, and are here to help with guidance and advice.
And, when the business world throws you a curve-ball, as it inevitably always does, we are right here in your corner.
Your own business consultants, with you all the way.
Investment
Getting a new project off the ground is, well, expensive. We are here to share that load.
Firstly, we can provide loans of the cold hard cash necessary. Buying stock, deposits on-premises, paying for equipment and more.
Secondly, we can take on expensive parts of the project and pay the upfront costs. Marketing is a great example. Huge amounts need to be invested here before the very first sale. We both do the work and pay all those upfront costs, moving a huge financial burden from your shoulders to ours.
You don’t have to need all four strands
Some of our business partners needed no investment at all but still came to us to form a joint venture because of the skills we bring to the table. As long as at least one of the main strands above could be the key to unlocking your business’ growth, we’d love to chat.
One size fits… well, one.
Every partnership we form is unique, with a different blend of the four main strands: marketing, tech, advice and investment.
For some projects, it’s all about our digital marketing skills, for others that’s barely relevant. Some businesses need upfront investment to get them started, others don’t need a single cent.
Let us know your plan, and we’ll tailor a partnership to suit you.
How it works: the full details
Form a joint venture
We form a joint venture with each of our partners. It may be as formal as a stand-alone limited company, or as informal as a piece of paper saying “We’ll do this, you do that, then we’ll divide up the spoils like this….”
Divide out the roles and responsibilities
For each project, we’ll work together to clearly lay out what we should provide, and what’s your department.
Generally, we’ll be looking after the bits we are very good at - the website and marketing side of things for a start. We are not just advising, we are hands-on doing the work here. If a big tech input is needed, we’ll lay out what we can do there.
Guidance, no matter what
We are here to guide you through the whole process, including in your areas. How to set up and register a company, or how to design an effective recruitment process. How to put together a branding guide or reviewing your business strategy.
Your business to run
Your project is your project. We are not here to run your business, nor are we a 50:50 partner. All our projects are set up so that we are a minor partner at most, with a distinct area of responsibility. We’ll look after the sections you’d like us to run, like IT for example, with everything else being yours to run.
Investment: money
If the business needs an injection of capital, we can provide that.
Let’s talk turkey a quick minute. If you need a €10,000 to €50,000 investment, we are a good size fit.
We expect all our partners to be able to fund their personal side - these loans & investments are not for directors’ salaries. Outside of that, they are fairly flexible, with past examples including deposits on-premises, overhauls and building work, specialist equipment and training.
There are many possible financial models here, and we tailor each to the needs of the business. Interest-free loans, investing via equity, shares, directorships - we’ve done a whole mix before. Equally, it can be funding for new businesses, or investments for established businesses to grow.
Investment: workload
We pay all the costs for all the sections we do. Often, this is the larger investment we provide.
The Marketing Chicken and Egg: A lot of businesses need to spend a lot on marketing to get the first income in the door. But without any income, how can you spend huge figures on marketing?
The Solution: We do your marketing and pay all the costs, keeping your capital free to invest in your product and your clients.
Business advice and consultancy
We are here for advice and support on all areas of the project. The ultimate sounding board, if you will. There’s no limit to the business consultancy our partners get.
The Start-up Phase
Any new project has a thousand questions, which in turn generally open up a thousand more. We’ve been here before, and are always on hand to help guide the new project. What’s should be your main focus? What just needs doing as fast as possible? What’s been completely forgotten? We are here to help through it all.
The Growth Phase
When it’s time to move the project to the next level, our full business brains kick in. There’s a whole pile of new things to consider and countless new options to look at.
Getting out of the Rut
For established businesses, things can get comfortable. Then that turns into a rut. Your product is awesome, but for some reason, it is not getting the sales it should. We are here to help you break through the plateau and keep the business moving up.
When Curveballs appear
We’ve been through the 2008 recession. We are in the middle of the Covid-19 crisis. Running a business means having curveballs thrown at you, and when that happens, we are in your corner. Battle-hardened and experienced to boot.
Tech & custom software
By tech, we mean anything to do with a computer.
For most projects, the first year or so is about proof-of-concept, making sure the product works, and your customers are loving the service. During this time most businesses can run on off-the-shelf systems. There are a thousand options though and it’s hard to know where to start. We are here to take that headache away for you. Phone systems, email systems, accounting systems, payroll systems, data backup systems, IT security systems - we’ve been there before and can get your business set up and flying in no time at all.
When things grow, and the orders start to pile in, that’s the time we tend to start talking about web application development and building custom systems just for your business. When your old systems just cannot keep up with the orders, and you find the systems are becoming a hindrance to the growth of the business.
We can then roll in with our full business and tech know-how. We go over all the company’s systems from top to bottom. Once we’ve got a clear picture of all the requirements, we can set to work making a custom system to allow the project to grow to its full potential.
Often it’s about pulling everything together. One system to handle orders, billing, accounting, delivering the products, CRM, emailing and much more. Taking the divided systems and bringing them into one, well-oiled machine.
Every project is different though, so we design each one to give the most benefits for that unique business.
Sharing the pie
There are no upfront costs to your business. The idea is that we too invest and share the risk. We generally create an agreement that means we’ll divide out the pie when the project succeeds.
For example, with our ski chalet partners, we’ll sit down at the end of each ski season and divide out the money made. We may have been working on the project for 12 - 18 months before we take any income.
Every project is different, with varying requirements of investment, marketing and tech requirements, so there’s no clear cut percentage that we take.
There are no extra or separate costs for separate services. For example, you’ll see figures on our software development page, but that’s just for people who want to buy that as a stand-alone product. When you join our partnership scheme, everything comes in one package.
We have also done graded systems before, where we take nothing until a minimum turnover level is reached, to help make sure fixed costs are covered first. As turnover increases, we take an increasing slice of the pie, kind of like income tax bands. This works well for fixed cost based businesses where there are overheads to be met first before dividing the spoils.
These are just examples of how it can work, and we can chat to find the best system for your project.
Wondering what we are looking for in a partner?
Getting the right fit is crucial to a successful business partnership. Over the years, we’ve honed in on what makes these really work, and we are very selective about who we work with. It’s a big risk and investment for all sides, after all.
Well, this all sounds great… or does it?
A partnership like this isn’t for everyone. Here are a few bits to consider when thinking if it could be right for your next business project. This us, warts and all.
Have you considered our Angel Investment instead?
Working with us as a business angel investor instead gives you the injection of capital, plus our advice and guidance on call whenever you need it. If that’s all you need, that could be a better option for you. The business partner scheme is for people who want a hands-on business partner to get involved in the company.
Here for the long haul
We are here to form long-term partnerships with businesses both new and old. That’s not for everyone. Some would much rather pay a company for a service and then the job is done. That’s not a service we offer, though there are plenty of companies that do.
The partnership scheme is for those who love the idea that we’ll still be working together in 5 years’ time and beyond.
Bringing business advice as well as implementation
We bring our business brains to everything we do, and we are not going to build something we don’t think will work.
Take building a website, for example.
With a web dev company, you can say “build me a website that looks like this…” and they will. Even if in their heart of hearts they don’t think it’s the right plan. That’s just not us.
We’ll want to know everything about your product, your market and your source of clients. Then we’ll use all our experience and expertise to plan a website that’ll effectively sell to those people.
Your job is telling us the targets to hit, and we’ll devise the best way to hit them.
That’s a big point of difference. If you want just implementation, our business partner scheme might not be the best option.
If, however, you want both business advice and implementation, then we could be a great fit.
We are not perfect
If we were to list all the mistakes we’ve made along the way… well, we’d be here a while.
We are not perfect and don’t make any claims to getting it right all the time. All we hope is that we learn each time, and by sharing our missteps with you, it might help you avoid falling into some of the pitfalls we met the first time around.
Contact us
As things stand, we are not looking for new partnerships or businesses to invest in. Should this change, we’ll keep you posted here.
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