Department of Engineering

Equity Fingerprint - every business plan should have one

14 November 2005

Q. How do you best make plans to maximise value in a knowledge-based business as it develops and grows?

A. Ensure that you fully understand the implications of how the equity in your enterprise is divided - and what will happen when you alter the balance.

The Department's Professor Bill Fitzgerald and PhD student David Excell have been working on an innovative software-based application called Equity Fingerprint which is of particular relevance to start-up entrepreneurs and young technology businesses. Bill and David are applying pattern recognition techniques developed in the Signal Processing Laboratory to recognise evolving trends within both successful and not so successful businesses. Bill saw the potential of applying pattern recognition techniques to the equity structure of company development, a unique approach to company analysis.

Equity Fingerprint is a product of the Cambridge Cluster: entrepreneurs and academics working together. It allows founders and shareholders to gain a clearer understanding of how value is being generated in the company and how they can plan more effectively for sustainable growth.

Equity Fingerprint helps answer key questions such as:

• How best to share the equity of my company at key stages in its development?
• When will I need to bring in outside expertise?
• What is the ideal stage to approach venture capitalists?
• When should I sell out?

Equity Fingerprint provides a visual representation of how shareholdings in a business change over time as outside investment is brought in and the Founders are diluted. Behind the software is a unique system for analysing data from a wide range of existing companies, allowing you to highlight the trends that are most significant for the success of your own business.

The Equity Fingerprint application will be discussed at an East of England Development Agency (EEDA) Conference - Destination Growth 'The Opportunities of Technology' on 17th November 2005 at Newmarket Racecourse

Explaining the Equity Fingerprint concept and its unique value to small businesses will be:

Professor Bill Fitzgerald
Professor of Applied Statistics and Signal Processing, University of Cambridge Department of Engineering.

David Excell
PhD student in the Signal Processing and Communications Laboratory, University of Cambridge Department of Engineering

Philip Baddeley
Business Mentor, Angel and Entrepreneur who devised Equity Fingerprint.

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