Revenue and Growth

Relatively unknown until recently, representation and warranty insurance is an interesting—and often extremely effective—tool for helping M&A deals cross the finishing line. By shifting the financial risk for breaches of representation and warranties to an insurance firm, these arrangements can enable sellers to receive all the purchase price proceeds at closing as opposed to being exposed to liquidity risk post deal close.

Budgeting can be a drawn-out process, yet oftentimes once the year starts and results diverge, they become forgotten. Instead of budgeting just with qualitative methods, managers should combine them with quantitative tools. Comparing regressed historic trends with future expectations can be more accurate and ultimately ensure the budget survives the year.

Due in part to the unceremonial nature of its title, the value-creation potential of business plan consultants is often misunderstood and underappreciated. Questions such as, “What do they do that I can’t?”, “Why do they cost so much?” and, “Don’t you think we can handle this ourselves?”, all too often haunt their practice.

Having prolifically added value to 25+ clients across a range of industries, sizes, and mandates, Toptal Management Consultant, Josh Chapman, sheds light on the full scope of business plan consulting. What it is to be a great business plan consultant, how they create value, and what skills, attributes and experiences constitute the greats vs. the pretenders.

A decidedly less sexy, albeit critical, part of a CFO’s job description is working capital management and optimization. There are countless examples of companies that are forced to incur unnecessary debt and other financial obligations to meet their short-term financing needs, when in fact ample cash is sitting idly stuck in working capital.

But working capital optimization is hard to get right and often requires significant cross-functional efforts to execute effectively. In this article, Toptal Management Consultant Emilio Labrador draws on 25 years of professional experience across multiple industries to outline some of his main suggestions and approaches on how to tackle working capital management projects.

Renewable energy generation, led by solar PV and wind power, is growing at a considerable rate. Innovations are lowering the cost to generate such power to levels of traditional fossil fuels. Yet underneath the positive headlines, there are some fundamental issues that remain in the long-term sustainability of business models in the industry.

Depending on your perspective, type, and motivation, the idea of building a board of directors either excites or intimidates you, complete with all associated imagery of aged oak rooms, brief-case wielding titans, and expensive cigars.

This article, by Toptal Management Consultant Orinola Gbadebo-Smith, sets out to debunk a few myths. It sheds light on boards as a construct, their workings, dealings, and nuances, and explores some battle-tested strategies for recruiting, building, and managing effective boards.

Fundraising is hard to get right, which is why companies of all sorts often turn to fundraising experts for help and advice regarding the fundraising process. There is a multitude of different professional figures that help companies raise capital, but for startups and growth companies, the two figures most often encountered are fundraising consultants and broker-dealers. Who is right for which endeavor?

For a business manager, choosing what to invest in should not be an exercise of instinct. With capital budgeting methods, managers can appraise various projects simultaneously, with the end result indicating which one will have the highest impact on company value.

In his first article on the effects of the new US corporate tax reform bill, Toptal Management Consultant Jacob Wright assessed one of the most important impacts of the reform: the changes to interest deductibility. In this follow-up article, he runs through some further thoughts related to the effects on capital expenditures, in addition to a more high-level assessment of what the optimal capital structure of the future will look like given these changes.

Though matchmaking is one of the oldest industries in existence, online matchmaking is now having a moment of its own. This article explores the business of dating: the market size of dating apps in the U.S., the industry’s biggest players, and how these products actually make money (if they even do).

Investment due diligence is a necessary process for both buyers and sellers to undertake to ensure the swift execution of their envisaged transaction. Although, with the stakes high, there are certain challenges that can arise throughout the process which, with careful planning and execution, can be mitigated.

The field of robotics has seen incredible strides forward in recent years. As a result of improvements in computer vision, dexterity and also overall economics, use of robots has increased in a variety of different fields. However, most of the growth in robotics so far has happened in industrial applications, and thus hidden from the view of the general public. But is this about to change?

In this article, Toptal Management Consultant Francesco Castellano focuses on the commercial robotics market. Thanks to recent breakthroughs in the fields of AI, mechatronics, sensors, and batteries, service and commercial robots are likely to see tremendous growth and adoption, likely heralding a new robotics revolution that could transform our daily lives in countless ways.

Conventional wisdom says you need a team to found a startup. But what if you prefer to do it alone or can’t find the right co-founders? Contrary to popular belief, there are many successful solo ventures. This guide shows you how to get started.

In the life of almost any growing enterprise, there comes a point in time when the existing systems and processes become insufficient. For most enterprises at this key inflection point, implementing enterprise resource planning (ERP) software, which integrates all areas of the business, can help to overcome this issue. This article provides enterprise leaders with the benefits and risks of ERP, as well as a detailed step-by-step implementation guide.

LTV:CAC analysis is one of the most important exercises startup founders must go through to evaluate their business’ prospects and raise external funding. It is, however, frequently misunderstood and misinterpreted.

In this article, Toptal Management Consultant Ryan Downie runs through a practical tutorial of how to perform LTV:CAC analysis correctly, and how it should be adapted and interpreted depending on the business model or sector in question.

Finding out your return on investment from a project can become a subjective process with the myriad of returns measures and formulas that exist. This overview provides a breakdown and explanation of how to calculate return on investment, looking at what type of return you need to measure and how to arrive at an answer. With further guidance on how to use returns data to guide objective decision making.