Accelerating Originators

You are exactly the kind of founder we look to partner with. Esca is an investment fund and  “startup studio”, accelerating your brand idea into a strong and generative company using our unique shared services team and financing. We collaborate around your vision, allowing you to focus on what you do best: create!

We have an informative open-source due diligence process that is both quick and fair. We will start by evaluating the taste of your product(s) and the business to date (typically pre-revenue ideas or brands with less than $1M in sales) to begin developing the architecture of your brand playbook. If you agree with our equity, salary, dividend and benefits offer, you will be invited to become part of Esca. After that we all roll up our sleeves as a team, you move into a creative role, and we collaboratively get down to our work.

Historically, business incubators offer business advice and startup mentoring. That’s a great approach for people with a strong entrepreneurial base, but our observations have shown it’s not well suited to artisans. We believe artisans want to improve their craft — and as businesspeople, so do we want to improve our craft. We feel that it’s better to operate as a startup studio that employs professionals in all areas of business, from operations to sales to finance and beyond. This generates the quickest and best results as we look to collectively bring innovation though commercialization to market.

Revenue-based financing (RBF) is a type of short-term debt financing that is repaid as a percentage of the monthly revenue generated by the company. With the repayments being more flexible through the ups and downs of business, RBF ensures that financial liabilities don’t cripple the brands.

Using our analytics (open-source), we continually develop the roadmap for the brand to be a standalone company, with the intention of leaving the shared services and financing model as soon as possible. Usually, this occurs when sales are enough to cover the leadership team’s salaries. Typically, one of three things will happen: 1) we will have created a great new small business we will sell to the employees; 2) we have created a unicorn and we will work with venture capital firms to scale quickly into new markets; or 3) we create an early acquisition scenario for a strategic buyer to take the brand(s) and bring them into a new family of products with one of our larger partners, which means another liquidity event for you, the founder.

Private equity firms typically want to keep a close eye on Esca, as our portfolio of food & beverage companies are well on their way to being great acquisitions. Typically, PE firms will invest in Esca for early access to highly profitable deal flow.

Venture capital firms also want to keep a close eye on Esca, as each of the companies within our portfolio are on a path targeting beyond $5M in annual revenues, making them great venture investments as they scale globally.

Family offices have an opportunity to invest in the venture capital arm of Esca and benefit from equity investments in our rapidly growing portfolio of food & beverage companies. They can benefit extensively from the high-yield liquidity events. They can either cash out or acquire further equity, up to 100% in these companies.

Like PE companies, food & beverage companies also have an opportunity to acquire early access to deal flow. Esca can also perform outsourced research & development for strategics.

Investors have an opportunity to invest in the venture capital arm of Esca and benefit from equity investments in our rapidly growing portfolio of food & beverage companies. They can benefit extensively from the high-yield liquidity events. British Columbia investors receive a 30% tax credit on their investment in a venture capital corporation (VCC) or an eligible business corporation (EBC).

Esca is designed to create and support local living economies, and local food & beverage movements. Esca works in the smallest communities to the largest cities in the world. We believe our open-source business model plugs seamlessly into other venture accelerators, incubators, hubs, marketplaces and national, regional or local economic-development and food-security initiatives.

It is a simple model that is easily implemented. All that Esca requires to get started are people in your community with a desire to innovate, and local agencies willing to connect these amazing artisans and craftspeople to Esca so we can assist funding their food & beverage ideas.