What Advice Do You Have for Entrepreneurs Seeking Angel Investment or Other Funding?

Video Transcript

I have advice for entrepreneurs who are seeking funding. There are really six things I want you to think about. First off, you really need to know your investor prospects. Do not approach an investor who likes MedTech investing with a data storage deal. It just doesn’t work. You need to do your homework and understand who the investors are that you want to talk with. Secondly, you need to be able to tell your story in two different ways in one minute, kind of I’ll call it an elevator pitch and then the 10-minute process. And to support that, you need to have an executive summary of your business, which is maybe a one-page document. And you need to have a PowerPoint presentation to accompany a presentation for about 10 minutes. And that PowerPoint presentation should not have a lot of words. You don’t want to have your investors reading the page rather than listening to what you’re talking to them about.

The third thing is to organize your corporate and business records in an electronic storage place. Investors are going to want to understand your business and do their due diligence investigation. You look much more professional if you have everything all set up and ready to go for them when they’re ready to see it instead of creating some sort of delay while you organize your documents later on.

Fourth, I want you to recognize that fundraising is a full-time job on top of the business of starting your company. You need to be mentally prepared for the fact that it’s going to take a lot longer to raise money than you possibly think that it may take, and you need to talk to an awful lot of investors to accomplish what you want to accomplish. Fifth, I want you to think about leveraging your network to meet with investors. Warm introductions to investors are always the best way to do it, whether you’re using lawyers like us or you’re using your accountants or other business advisors, that’s the best way to get connected to investors. And finally, don’t forget that raising money actually implicates federal and state securities laws. So you actually have to comply with some laws, which means be sure to talk to your counsel, hopefully, us, about what it is that you need to do to be able to raise your money the right way.