Hotel Monet
Leisure, 2021

Béatrice and Olivier le Grelle are planning to launch the Hôtel Monet, on the banks of the Seine, in Giverny, reconciling nature and high living quality.

Further Finance worked with them at the end of 2021 to help them structure their seed round of financing on OpCo and PropCo.

Olivier had heard about us through friends. We are not experts in the hotel world but he didn’t mind. The intellectual challenge and the freshness of the founders is what made us want to go.

Why did you choose to be helped?

I do have a financial background but that is definitely not my cup of tea. Our project here was quite brandnew to me and shows a certain level of complexity in its structuration, especially between OpCo and PropCo. We had to discuss with a large panel of investors, all having their own investment thesis. At a certain point of time, we needed to be confident on all finance-related topics. That is why we were looking for a “sparring partner”, somebody who can make us improve.

Did you have specific expectations regarding you financial advisory boutique?

Finance people and investors are looking for minimum requirements when it comes to investment: language, typical presentation, business plan with ratios that matter. As an entrepreneur, either you fit, either you don’t. You need to choose which side you want to be in.

Why did you pick Further?

We took the time to meet with several corporate finance boutique and to compare. For a large portion of them, they were quite expensive and, I would say, a little bit condescending when reviewing our project. Understanding, reactivity, flexibility, price : it was a perfect mix and match in their offer given our needs.

Besides, I am sensible kind of guy. I would say 60% of my choices are based on human relations and 40% on cold rationality. Here, the quality of human relations scored a lot of points. I found extremely quickly at ease with the Further team: they have a real capacity to strengthen your confidence. We had over 10,000 questions with Beatrice right before the start. These folks helped us focus on what matters.

Were you satisfied with both our work and deliverables?

We were sincerely astonished by the quality of the deliverables and their speed. We are overall satisfied. I think they lacked some references that are purely leisure-related (typical market ratio, negotiation metrics). However, Anthony and his teams always told us, well ahead of the signature of their mandate, that they did not have specific expertise in this area. On that matter, they have been extremely honest and I knew from day one what I had to expect from them.

Do you have a word for other entrepreneurs who are wondering if they need to be accompanied?

Choose your fights. When an entrepreneur launches his projects, he has to oversee everything. Absolutely everything. You often follow your nose at the very start. You may be right…or wrong! You will learn it sooner or later. If your intuition was wrong, then you just have lost time. Time is the worst thing to lose as entrepreneur. You better spend your money by hiring a trusted expert than lose your time. Never forget that time is money!

Quality and accuracy have a price, but they are worth a try.