That is when the banker is chosen, usually long before a banker is formally invited.
A raise, a listing, a sale or a purchase is decided in private months before it is public. The signs reach the record well before the news does.
Who you sell to: Founders, promoters, boards and finance heads.
A point of view on their company, built from their own numbers and compared with their peers.
Your angle on why now: their growth, their peers' deals, their debt coming due.
Who on your side knows the board (directors in common).
Each dated.
A banker sees three changes on one company's record in a quarter: a new auditor, two independent directors, the conversion to public. The brief: the company's growth against its two closest peers, a loan due next year, and a director it shares with a board the banker's managing director sits on. The banker asks for the introduction before the founder has met a banker.
Claude, Codex or Kimi. Your desk sits in a folder on your side, or on Solo in your own Drive, and the record answers from ours. Drafts for your mail, messages and CRM wait for your word.
No deck. An hour with the people who built it, on your own book.