PE Advisor Chris Brown On How Today’s High Growth Consumer Brands Are Raising Capital

With ForceBrands‘ core competency on growth planning and hiring strategies, it’s no surprise that funding often comes up in conversations.

“I get asked that all the time about funding and how to raise capital,” ForceBrands‘ Senior Client Strategist Dustin Cherry said in a conversation with North Castle Partners‘ Functional Advisor Chris Brown. “I wanted to ask you a few of the questions that we get quite often in hopes that brands are maybe able to avoid pitfalls or at least are prepared informationally as they go to raise capital.”

Brown, who specializes in helping to grow consumer-focused brands at $400 billion private equity fund North Castle Partners, works directly with entrepreneurs and founders to help them professionalize their business.

When it comes to discovering the next great brand to work with, luck and timing certainly play into it. But for Brown and his team, business is truly personal. In other words, the people connection is a big piece of the investment puzzle.

“We are always open to a great business that is in the strike zone within one of our categories,” Brown said. “If somebody sounds really thoughtful on the phone and they seem like they’re really organized and they’re kind of on it, they understand their business, then you will tend to get numbers that are fairly organized and make logical sense and tell a decent story. And sometimes entrepreneurs are not that way — they may have a different skill set. So sometimes early on, those numbers are not very organized or they don’t tell a very cohesive story, so we have to put a lot of that together. It just depends on the entrepreneur, but we spend a lot of time thinking about the person.”

Watch the interview below as Brown explores how he and his team assess great investments, what brands should consider before raising capital, and more.

Watch their discussion below: