Capital Marketers Do you need a financing consultant to raise money--or can you go it alone?

Luck, they say, is where opportunity and preparation meet. Such was the case with Barry Suskind, who in the late '80s got his concept--gourmet Italian restaurants with a focus on home delivery--up and running with five units in New York City. Just one call to Primo Piatto's Pasta 2 U telephone number would send piping-hot regional Italian dishes anywhere in the city.

Suskind's idea was enhanced by the fact that the off-premise portion of the restaurant industry was exploding. And Suskind was on the cutting edge with lots of proprietary software for inventory control, communications and commissary management to take advantage of the new demand.

What Suskind was not prepared for, however, was the fact that a financing consultant he hired to help him arrange for expansion financing would lead him down a blind alley. "What I remember most," recalls Suskind, "is that we spent so many months arguing about the minutiae of my financial projections that nothing got done." So much time, in fact, that Suskind finally got fed up and put together a deal on his own.