Fundraising Pains and Wins

Hello, all!

I'm new here, and I've just started fundraising for my tech company. I want to hear about everyone's experiences with fundraising. What were you worried about? What did you not expect? What was the process like? What worked? What didn't work? What would you have done differently? What was frustrating? What tools did you use? What tools did you wish you had?

I'm interested in hearing from startups and small businesses...Whether you used equity-based, debt-based, crowdfunding, commercial lenders, VCs, angels...Currently fundraising or previously fundraised...Hit me with it!

 

Make sure to use the fundraised for purpose it was raised for. Good luck!

 

I think a lot of people seek funding way too soon. What is your tech company and what is the product? Do you have a business plan? I highly highly doubt anyone would ever give you money unless they were going to benefit from having equity in your company or a high yielding interesting rate on a loan. Either way they want to see what you have done already and what is your plan. If you have a finished product with a patent pending and an actual business plan and model I'm sure you can source funding. If you don't then you will need to prove you are going to return a profit.

Most people will not receive funding until they have some sort of established product, reputation and business model.

 

I have been involved with start-ups that have used Angel/Demon seed investors and also ones that have used VC's (Vulture Capitalists.) You can tell by my naming conventions what I think of both of them. Angel investors often have little skills/experiences except that one big hit that they got lucky on and it leads them to believe that they have the brains and risk tolerance to do it again (spoiler alert: they don't and most of them turn into demon investors once the going gets tough.) Vulture Capitalists are looking for the 1 in 10 big hit and absolutely crush the other nine companies that may not show the "magic" numbers they are looking for in the allotted time. I would avoid both if at all possible.

Then, there is the issue of getting seed money from family and friends. Good way to lose both the company and your family and friends.

If at all possible, you should be thinking about bootstrapping your business by growing sales, re-investing sales revenues, and then just rinsing and repeating to grow the company organically. If your product/service is as good as you think that it is, you should be able to prove it by selling some of it now. If the product requires a big investment to get it into production, perhaps you can get a few "early adopter" customers to help fund it by putting a down payment on their order in advance of production. BTW, if you cannot sell it early to customers or get them to help fund it, you have to seriously consider whether or not you have the "next big thing."

If you want to provide a bit more info about your specific offering, I will try to provide more insight as to how bootstrapping might work (I have a lot of experience in this realm, as well.)