Funding your dream.
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The three most powerful words in business: revenues, cash flow and profits.
You’ve got a great idea and you believe enough people will want it and be willing to pay for it. Excellent. That’s the starting point.
What’s next?
Each entrepreneur or want-to be business owner, or even non-profit organization founder (which sometimes is a bit of a misnomer) needs to ask themselves what is their desired end result for this future idea, concept, product or service notion?
What’s your goal?
- To make lots of money while you sleep?
- To build a venture that some other company will acquire and pay you a lot of money and maybe stock for?
- To do as a part-time gig and make some extra cash?
- To grow into a sustainable, profitable business that becomes a household name and goes public?
- To just make a nice living and enjoy yourself?
- To create a future enterprise for your family, so one day they can take it over and carry on the tradition?
- To build an organization that serves or provides products, ways to help a community, social, educational or environmental cause?
- To feed your ego and have good stories to tell your buddies?
There is not right or wrong answer here. In fact, a couple of these may light your fire. What’s important is, knowing where you want to go, because that’s key to getting you there.
Business plan or not?
There’s no shortage of debate about whether all companies need or don’t need for a full-blown business plan. I’ve done both. Here’s why.
If you have the time and resources, writing a full-blown business plan can be a great exercise. If you have a team, it also empowers collaboration and forces you to really think through all the components of your business, including: what are your funding and staffing needs, sales projections, who is your competition, what is business model, your unique selling point, how will you market and promote your offering and how will you run and grow your operation.
If you don’t have the luxury of time or team to fully write and create the above, do write a summary with bullets that covers all of these main points and update as things change, because they will. And yes, some great business ideas have started on a white paper napkin; However, I don’t recommend this be your only official planning document.
Starting bullets.
- What problem do you solve?
- What is the opportunity?
- Who wants it? Is the market large enough to meet your top-line business goals?
- How will do deliver this solution?
- What will it cost to deliver this solution?
- How will you market and promote your offering?
- After expenses, cost of goods or services, what’s left?
Our plan for this section is to share tools, insight, resources and other learning means to get your business growing.
Also check out FREE Biz Finds for the best free tools.
Discover the articles section on funding.
Read our blog too.
Got a question? Post it in the forum and we will do our best to get you an answer.
Other resources that can be helpful:
Guides on funding:
Peer to peer funding insight:
Inside scoop from other entrepreneurs on funding:
Entrepreneurial foundations:
Kauffman foundation
Angel funding resources:
Angel Capital Association
Venture capital resources:
National Venture Capital Associations
Minority and women funding:
Womens Funding Network
Funding companies:
Funding Universe
Did we miss one? Please share your feedback in our funding forum
Understanding the funding lingo:
Angel Investor: also known as a business angel or informal investor. This is an affluent individual who provides capital for a business start-up, usually in exchange for convertible debt or ownership equity. A small but increasing number of angel investors organizes themselves into angel groups or angel networks to share research and pool their investment capital.
Convertible Debt/Bond: A type of bond that can be converted into shares of stock in the issuing company or cash of equal value, at some pren-announced ratio.
Ownership equity: in accounting terms, after all liabilities are paid, ownership equity is the remaining interest in assets. If valuations placed on assets do not exceed liabilities, negative equity exists.
Venture Capital: Also known as VC or Venture. This is a type of private equity capital typically provided to early-stage, high-potential, growth companies in the interest of generating a return. Venture capital are generally made as cash in exchange for shares in the invested company.
Trust: In common law legal system, a trust is an arrangement whereby property is managed by one person for the benefit of another.
Seed Funding: a seed round, sometimes known as friends and family round or seed funding, is a securities offering whereby one or more parties that have some connection to a new enterprise invest the funds necessary to start the business so that it has enough fund to sustain itself for a period of development until it reaches either a state where it is able to continue funding itself, or has created something in value so that it is worthy of future rounds of funding.
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