Insights

Field notes from the work.

Short, practical notes on capital, catalogs, operations and delivery, written from the engagements we run.

A notebook and pen on a desk at dawn — I-00

Capital & Real EstateWhat a lender looks for in the first ten minutes Music & EntertainmentWhere catalog royalties leak AdvisoryWhat belongs in a 100-day plan after a close

What a lender looks for in the first ten minutes

Most funding conversations are decided early. Before a lender reads your projections, they are checking whether the file answers five questions.

What the money is for. A specific use of funds, with amounts, beats “growth capital” every time.
How it gets paid back. Lenders underwrite cash flow first. Expect questions about debt service coverage and what happens in a slow quarter.
How long you have operated, and what the records show. Recent business tax returns, current financial statements and bank statements are the usual starting point.
What is already owed. A clean debt schedule prevents surprises in underwriting.
What stands behind the loan. Collateral and personal guarantees are common, especially on SBA loans.

None of this requires a perfect business. It requires a file that is complete, consistent and easy to read. That is the work we do before any introduction is made.

Where catalog royalties leak

A catalog can pay every quarter for years and still be underpaying. The leaks are rarely dramatic. They are administrative, and they compound.

Unregistered or misregistered works. Songs never registered with performing rights organizations or the MLC, or registered with the wrong writers and shares.
Missing identifiers. Recordings without complete metadata cannot be matched to the right owner, so the money sits unclaimed.
Neighboring rights left on the table. Digital performance royalties for recordings, collected in the United States by SoundExchange, go unclaimed when no one registers for them.
Statements never reconciled. Payments are accepted without being checked against the agreements that govern them.
Foreign income lost in transit. Revenue that falls between sub-publishers and collecting societies abroad.

The fix starts with one file: agreements, registrations and statements side by side. Once it exists, the gaps show themselves and each one can be ranked by what it is worth. Audit rights in many agreements carry time limits, so the sooner the file exists, the more can be recovered.

What belongs in a 100-day plan after a close

New capital creates new expectations overnight. The board wants visibility, management wants room to run the business, and both are right. A good 100-day plan serves both without trying to fix everything at once.

Three to five priorities, each with an owner, a date and a measure. More than five is a wish list.
An operating cadence: a weekly leadership meeting, a monthly board-ready report and a decision log.
Reporting management can produce without heroics, built on the systems the company already has wherever possible.
The two or three hires or system changes the plan cannot succeed without.
An explicit list of what is not happening in the first 100 days.

The test at day 100 is simple. Investors can read the business, management is not drowning, and the next 100 days are planned from evidence.

Next step

Start with a conversation.

Tell us what needs to get done. You will receive a written first read on where the work stands and the first move.

Start a conversation Capabilities statement

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Calabasas, CA 91302