I received a message from one of my readers yesterday, who I have never met before and who works in Investment Capital with a firm in New York City. He contacted me because after reading my blog, he wanted to know if we could work together either through funding a future business opportunity or connecting other businesses that are ready for funding.
What I found interesting about this firm is that they do early stage funding, which most venture capital firms don’t do. Of course, your deal has to be real strong to have consideration, but the possibility is exciting to say the least.
I appreciated his interest and this prompted me to write this post because I think many people looking for money fail to use all the channels that are available to them. One of them is blogging about personal and business skills.
Blogging creates an indirect channel to connect with investors. It also helps you to perfect and polish your pitch so you know your story well. It gives investors the opportunity to look at your deal without having to feel like you are massaging the message for them.
I’m not looking for investors right now, but if I was, I’ve just been offered a perfect opportunity to pitch my deal to the New York financial market. What’s even more exciting is that by having venture capital approach me now, I have established myself as a known entity and I already have the door open should I choose to pursue venture capital in the future.
Before I would approach this person or any other investor, I know that I need to have everything in order including the business plan, projections, subscription agreements and prospectus. Without those documents in place, approaching an investor will only make me look like I don’t know what I’m doing, and they won’t take the time to talk to me later if I come back. Keep that in mind if you try to approach investors before you have the proper documents in place.
Even with the proper documents, you have to understand what the investor is looking for in a deal. Most of them are expecting to see a plan that’s scalable and has documented substantial potential for the upside.
Venture capital generally take six to twelve months to fund a deal and rarely will happen quicker than that even when your contact tells you three months, don’t hold your breath, you might not make it to actual funding if you do. It never works out that way.
What you should take away from this post is in order to get funded; you need to start working all the avenues before you think you want to raise capital. That way when you do raise capital, you have reduced the amount of effort to accomplish your goals and who knows, your investor may find you!