Justin Senkbeil of CompostNow Raleigh, North Carolina

5. 3,168,108 lbs.

8. FINANCING THE MOVEMENT
Key ingredients to successfully financing your work.

9. MONEY IS IMPORTANT
Funds, sustain and grow our efforts.
Covers costs of operating the business:
- Performing service
- Purchasing equipment
- Customer Support, Admin, Overhead
Covers costs of growing the business:
- Acquiring Customers (Marketing & Sales)
- Capacity (facilities, equipment, support staff)

10. WHERE DOES IT COME FROM?
Founder Contributions
Customers (Revenue)
Banks
Grants & Awards
Investors

11. KEY INGREDIENTS
Intense Focus
Basic Business Model
Financial Strategy

12. FOCUS
Resources (time, money, bandwidth)
The basics. Core service.
Pick a few things and get really good at them.
Maximize value and streamline for efficiency.
Our focus: collections (partnered with processor)

13. BUSINESS MODEL
How you plan to find, service and keep customers.
How you will generate revenue and cover costs.
The amount you charge for your services,
and cost to start, sustain, grow.
Key:
- Pricing Model
- Cost Managment
- Efficient Operating Model
- Customer Acquisition (Growth) Model
We focused first on our operations model (5 years!),
then growth model. Learning how to measure and articulate.

14. PRICING MODEL
Pricing of your product or service
is so important.
Charge enough for the service.
More than you think.
It’s hard to raise the price. Can
always lower.
Our approach: Maximize value
and find the customer who can
pay for it.

15. COST MANAGMENT
When you can demonstrate you know
your basic costs, and that your revenue
exceeds all your costs, then you open
yourself up to more opportunities for
financing.
Can best make decisions on where to
invest your limited resources,
maximizing output vs input.
Can appeal to those with capital. In
most cases, someone will only give you
money if you can show them you are
able to, or have a plausible plan to, pay
them back.

16. OPERATING MODEL
How you will efficiently provide
the product/service.
Expenses need to be lower than revenue.
Keep it simple. Invest in good equipment.
Know your costs.
Generate a operating margin (gross profit)
for funding every other part of biz

17. GROWTH MODEL
How to acquire, onboard and keep customers.
Associated costs:
- Marketing & Sales
- Startup Equipment
- Customer Service
How you’ll finance it:
- Profit from existing customers
- Debt
- Investment
Is it sustainable? CoA, CLV, Churn

18. FINANCIAL STRATEGY
How you will fund starting, operating and growing the business.
Our strategy has been: Find customers who can pay for high value service, and
use that money to invest in building momentum. Building our capacity to
create value, and grow. Pairing with right capital at right time.
In general:
- Banks: Finance Equipment
- Investors: Finance Growth

19. CHECK THE BOXES
Key to unlocking traditional sources of capital
is to check as many boxes as you can:
- Business Plan (know your numbers!)
- Get cash-flow positive (or clear path to it)
- Show how you can afford to repay and debt
or investment
- Articulate value of positive social impact
(to society and the business)
- Build Personal & Business credit
- Loans, Leases, Performance

20. INVESTMENT
Key to unlocking investment
opportunities:
- What banks want, plus:
- Show market demand
- Happy customers
- Financially sustainable model
for attracting customers
- Understanding of costs to
acquire customers (or
convincing model)
- Articulate value of positive
social impact
(to society and the business)

21. justin@compostnow.org
@CompostNow
Justin Senkbeil