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MenuFunding Expert: Pls help
We have launched a new website (last week) which focuses on selling ready and customized industry databases and reports, apart from providing data related support solution.I know this has value in the market but we have got stuck with almost no fund.
With no clients and huge expenditure ahead, what should we do?? I need funding..via this we aim to expand our Delivery Infrastructure and to garner client traction to our portal via Sales & Branding.
HOW, WHOM to approach? Pls help with your solution.
Answers
While there is potential value in your industry databases and reports, that value is worth nothing if there isn't a customer on the other end. In order to viably approach external funding sources, you will likely need to bootstrap and iterate your business model until you show that your product has value in the marketplace.
I've been in the market before pitching a pre-revenue business and I can say with certainty that it is an incredibly difficult proposition. The companies that are typically able to raise capital in these situations feature founders with established entrepreneurial experience (ideally, with successful exits) or some sort of proprietary technology.
Best of luck, but my ultimate advice is to start small and build slowly. From the looks of it, you are putting the cart in front of the horse. I would imagine offering your product on a free or trial basis would allow you to promote in a cost-effective manner. At this stage, your goal is to prove the concept, so any progress here will also help with potential fundraising down the road.
Before you approach an investor or investing body, invest time and energy in putting your house in order. Ensure you have lucidly defined goals and objective, validated reasoning for required capital investment, and necessary collaterals in place to gain traction and build momentum. In a nutshell, do your homework before reaching out to seek help.
In my more than a decade of experience I've worked closely with various entrepreneurs and helped them plan around raising investment. One common mistake everyone makes is to seek investment without having a pragmatic and realistic future plan in hand.
There could be plethora activities to perform and parameters to brainstorm while planning to seek investment. Let me know if there's anything in specific I could help you out with. I am just a clarity away.
People often joke that the first rule about raising money is that you raise money when you can, not when you need. This way you are not stressed in getting the funds and this is a long procedure...
Instead on focusing on getting an investment, try getting clients. If you have a working product, release a beta version, get subscribers (even for free) and start testing the system. Getting an investment will take your focus from the product and this is not something you can do right now. I would recommend reading the blog by Alex Turnbull from Groove. You will learn a lot and get ideas on how to get paying clients. Once you will have that, you will be able to go look for an investment.
One viable option is to attain unsecured bundles of high limit business credit cards available in your condition based on two criteria. Have an entity formed, costs $500 by any number of low paid highly indebted attorneys, and personal credit scores of 700 hounded. This financing is available up to $200,000 and convertible to cash and used for any businesses purpose. Such as paying for the fees to attain the funding, payroll, qualifying for additional loans by providing collateral or investments into ones business, paying for the minimum %2 monthly payment on funds used, reports only on business credit protecting your personal credit unless on defaults on the loan, start ups can report no income or assets and attain funding but at lower amounts, as customary with credit cards, income and assets are stated no financial documentation is requested, once approved there are no reviews on how you utilize your loans like bank lines of credit do rarely and monitor your credit, and can convert your lines of credit into term loans and take away your existing available credit with no recourse or obligation to justify changing terms and conditions. You can also attain equipment lease financing to purchase or ever to take equipment you have equity in and you will attain %100 lease financing by signing over title, and use the funds as you choose. You can attain free business credit building systems and start to offset how your personal credit may be showing signs of financial stress simply by making $25 dollar monthly payments on five merchants your buy products form each month and pay back before 30 days. One can attain a $7,000 merchant credit line apporved by one company that approves with no criteria and provides low payment options for business services including marketing, web SEO, web development, provide credit to your clients that purchase your products in the thousands if I am not mistaken, office equipment, computers business and personal travel packages, all of which as very low monthly payments, only subject to your submitted pay stub or business revenue. I believe there is about a $100 fee. All your payments report to your business credit. Also, make this financing available to your potential clients can make deals happen that otherwise wouldn't. Funding is attained in two weeks. This is the best I have for you. Oh, zero interest for up to 12 months on the unsecured business credit lines. Give me a call and you can get an underwritter to provide a prequalification in 24 -48 hours, and an assigned expert business adviser to review your report and your options. There is no harm to your credit, no up front fee, fees only if one attains a loan, and one can uses a partners credit to qualify if needed. You always have options if you are not thinking linearly. Use other peopoles resources, get up and running with their merchant credit where you can send out mass marketing if you know what works to get clients comming in large numbers. Look for Jay Abraham on how to find options that everyone has but over looks. With templates, case studies, partnerships, find a business that sells similar or not, products they can't move eight er and bundle them with yours and set up a fifty percent or more take on the products you sell of the other company. Find a company that has a sales staff but no product to sell or not enough market and put them to work for you for a full month and share in the profits one attains every 30 days. Come on. You can do this. Keep reaching out.
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100M+ in revenues in 5 years or less does not happen very often. As an example of one sector, here is an interesting data visualization (circa 2008) of the 100 largest publically traded software companies at that time that shows their actual revenue ramp-ups from SEC filings (only 4 out of these 100 successful companies managed this feat, which themselves are an extremely small percentage of all of the VC-funded software companies): How Long Does it Take to Build a Technology Empire? http://ipo-dashboards.com/wordpress/2009/08/how-long-does-it-take-to-build-a-technology-empire/ Key findings excerpted from the link above: "Only 28% of the nation’s most successful public software empires were rocketships. I’ve defined a rocket ship as a company that reached $50 million in annual sales in 6 years or less (this is the type of growth that typically appears in VC-funded business plans). A hot shot reaches $50m in 7 to 12 years. A slow burner takes 13 years or more. Interestingly, 50% of these companies took 9 or more years to reach $50m in revenue."MB
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When raising money how much of equity do you give up to keep control? Is it more important to control the board or majority of shares?
It entirely depends on the kind of business you have. If you have a tech startup for example, there are pretty reliable assumptions about each round of funding. And a business plan and financial forecasts are almost totally irrelevant to sophisticated tech investors in the early stages of a company's life. Recent financial history is important if the company is already generating revenue and in that case, a twelve-month projection is also meaningful, but pre-revenue, financial forecasts in tech startups mean nothing. You shouldn't give up more than 10-15% for your first $100,000 and from that point forward, you should budget between 10-20% dilution per each round of subsequent dilution. In a tech startup, you should be more nervous about dilution than control. The reality of it is that until at least a meaningful amount of traction is reached, no one is likely to care about taking control of the venture. If the founding team screws-up, it's likely that there will be very little energy from anyone else in trying to take-over and fix those problems. Kevin is correct in that the board is elected by shareholders but, a board exerts a lot of influence on a company as time goes-on. So board seats shouldn't be given lightly. A single bad or ineffective board member can wreak havoc on a company, especially in the early stages of a company's life. In companies outside of tech, you're likely going to be dealing with valuations that are far lower, thus likely to be impacted with greater dilution and also potentially far more restrictive and onerous investment terms. If your company is a tech company, I'm happy to talk to you about the financing process. I am a startup entrepreneur who has recently raised angel and VC capital and was also formerly a VC as part of a $500,000,000 investment fund investing in every stage of tech and education companies.TW
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VCs: What are some pitch deck pet peeves?
Avoid buzzwords: - every founder thinks their idea is disruptive/revolutionary - every founder says their financial projections are conservative Instead: - explain your validation & customer traction - explain the assumptions underlying your projections Avoid: - focusing extensively on the product/technology rather than on the business - misunderstanding the purpose of financial projections; they exist in a pitch deck to: a) validate the founders understanding of running a business b) provide a sense of magnitude of the opportunity versus the amount of capital requested c) confirm the go-to-market strategy (nothing undermines a pitch faster than financial projections disconnected from the declared go-to-market approach) d) generally discredit you as someone who understands how to build a company; for instance we'll capture 10% of our market, 1% of China, etc. Top down financial projections get big laughs from investors after you leave the room. bonus) don't show 90% profit margins. Ever. Even if you'll actually have them. Ever. Instead: - avoid false precision by rounding all projections to nearest thousands ($000) - include # units / # subscribers / # customers above revenue line; this goes hand-in-hand with building a bottom up revenue model and implicitly reveals assumptions. Investors will determine if you are realistic, conservative, or out of your mind based largely on the customer acquisition numbers and your explanation of how they will be achieved. - highlight your assumptions & milestones on first customers, cash flow break even, and other customer acquisition and expense metrics that are relevant Avoid: - thinking about investor money as your money - approaching the pitch from your mindset (I need money); investors have to be skeptics, so understand their perspective. - bad investors; it's tempting to think that any money is good money. You can't get an investor to leave once they are in without Herculean efforts and costs (and if you're asking for money, you can't afford it). If you're not on the same page with an investor on how to run/grow the business, you'll regret every waking hour. Instead: - it's their money; tell them how you are going to utilize their money to make them more money - you're a founder, a true believer. Your mantra should be "de-risk, de-risk, de-risk". Perception of risk is the #1 reason an investor says no. Many are legitimate, but often enough it's simply a perception that could have been addressed. - beyond the pitch, make the conversation 2-way. Ask questions of the investor (you might learn awesome things or uncover problems) and talk to at least two other founders they invested in more than 6 months ago.JP
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What exit strategies do angel investors want/prefer for a service business?
Keep in mind that investors invest for returns. Telling a prospective investor that you want his or her money to grow your business but don't plan on ever generating a liquidation event that pays him or her a dividend is not likely going to work; angel or not. You may be better served with debt financing where returns are generated in the form of interest payments not equity value growth. BUT, if equity financing is the plan, you're going to want to develop a strategic exit plan right from the start. That means identifying prospective buyers, strategic channels etc and characterizing the value drivers for each right up front. You'll find prospective buyers come in a number of forms; competitors, bigger versions of you, strategic partners, private equity, etc. Each will value your business in different amounts for for different reasons. Understanding this is vitally important for you to navigate to securing the right money, from the right sources, with the most favorable terms. Once you've qualified and quantified each of them, then determine what (specifically) you're going to need to do to align your business with those prospective buyers generating the highest returns. This will drive your business model and go to market strategy and define your 'use of funds' decisions. This in turn result in a better, more valuable business whether you exit or not. Do it this way and you'll have no trouble raising money from multiple sources. You can learn more about the advantage of starting with a Strategic Exit plan here: http://www.zerolimitsventures.com/cadredc Good luck. SteveSL
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