Ok, I ask you, if you are a company and about to hire another company to come in and do some business consulting for you, do you ask for the Principles SSN number? Asking for the EIN number, yes, I can see that, as you need it to pay the bills with, and you can, if you so desire check out the business history of the company. But give out the Principles SSN? In over 20 years of professional business life, I’ve never heard it until this past couple of days.
In the process of helping a client company with their business plan, and getting them ready to go speak to, and land, VC money, we were introduced to a man that was billed as The Consultant for this company. This guy was rude, overbearing and asked for the following things, specifically:
1. Reference letters from my VC contacts.
2. A copy of our business plan format in detail from a like client.
3. My and my business partner’s Social Security Number so he could do a criminal and credit history report.
Now his pissed because we won’t give him that info. We charge from $14K to 100K for working with a company on their business plan, and presentation to VCs. We take 1% of the company, non-dilute able, to introduce them to the VC. Our credit history and criminal history are none of his damn business. I SOOOOOO wanted to hand/send him a bill for $15.1M for the VC list, and the business plan (and I would have even written it for this client!!), but didn’t want to get in a pissing match, which it appears he wants to…
Company credit history would be of import to this transaction, and I have no problems giving him the EIN number for the company, pointing him to our bank, etc. But our company is two months old… We have three clients, and while the client list is growing, we are too new to have a strong reference list!!
What are your thoughts on this?
No comments:
Post a Comment