Rainmaking reaches a milestone with Godt Syn exit
So far, the Scandinavian market for laser surgery has navigated its way through the financial crisis. In 2009 Godt Syn experienced a surprisingly strong demand, which has in some periods exceeded our capacity.
Around the year change of 2008/2009, the positive market situation combined with Godt Syn’s strong market position attracted the interest from the largest Scandinavian player in the industry.
It soon became clear, that especially one actor would gain a significant strategic advantage by acquiring Godt Syn and in the early spring of 2009 negotiations intensified with that specific actor. Negotiations were long and nerve wrecking but on May 14 the last contract was signed, which marked an important day in the short history of Rainmaking.
The exit of Godt Syn has given Rainmaking a financial robustness, which we did not anticipate this early on. At the same time it was proven, that with two exits in less than one year, we are able to follow our strategy, which is to create companies with a 3-5 year exit plan.
Naturally we pride ourselves by this but at the same time we stay humble to the many exciting challenges that lies ahead.
In regards to Godt Syn, the exit means that we can now offer the customers three times as many clinics to choose from. At the same time the quality of surgeons and experts has taken a tiger leap forward from an existing high level. As part of the earn-out-model, Rainmaking continues to head the company until late 2010, thus luckily we will stay close to our great colleagues in a future we look forward to with much anticipation.
Rainmaking in the UK
In the light of the very positive progress in Rainmaking throughout the last 12 months, we have decided to expand to the UK. For this reason, we are now looking for a Business Developer in London - see the job description here:
http://www.rainmaking.dk/media/18597/business%20developer%20with%20partner%20potential.pdf
We are already active in the British market due to our engagement in CyclePods (www.cyclepods.co.uk) that sells eco-friendly, design bicycle racks to customers such as Sky, BBC, IKEA, Sainsbury, and The Guardian among others.
Furthermore, we have a number of interesting points of contacts and projects, which are to be looked more in to.
Our goal is to create a full-grown London-office within a few years with 3-5 local partners and 20-30 employees in order to launch new concepts to the large British market. However, to begin with, we are starting fairly slowly with a single Business Developer having his/her working space situated in an entrepreneurial office space. In this way, we can create a couple of start-ups with positive cash flows which will lay the ground for further expansion.
Do you have any good ideas or contacts in London, which we should know of?
Ready to invest
In Rainmaking, we are now ready to increase our investments in new projects.
Our business politic is that we want to spread the risk by investing smaller amounts in several projects. We have a margin of expenditure of 1 mill. Dkr. for projects that we start up from scratch ourselves; and a margin of 500.000 Dkr. when we engage in others’ projects.
We cultivate our network of investors, and feel that it is healthy to have to convince professional investors to see the sense in our project. Previously, we have raised 25 million. Dkr. to the development of our existing companies, and we will continue this line of fund-raising.
Now, we are furthermore considering creating a "scholarship"/pre seed arrangement, by which we invest e.g. 100.000 Dkr. in totally new and untested projects. In the States, a guy by the name, Paul Graham, has started a company called Y Combinator by which he makes these kinds of micro-investments; as of today, he has ownership-shares in 145 start ups. We are somewhat tempted to start a similar arrangement in Denmark. In addition to money, we will – just as Paul Graham does – contribute with sparring, networking and ad hoc assistance in regards to e.g. fund-raising, larger contracts, and exit plans.
Do you think that talented entrepreneurs in Denmark will be interested in such an arrangement?
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