Choose Your Startup: How to Fund Your Business: Entrepreneur Series, #1

By Andrew D. Ive

If you are thinking about raising money for your new business idea, your startup or existing company then this book will help.  Understand what investors want, the investment sweet spot, how to pitch them, what they get for their investment, how to speed up the whole process and common mistakes which will could delay you by months.  Comes with a range of Founder Tips that will put you ahead of your startup competition. Choose Your Startup: How to Fund Your Company focuses on the main ways to get money for any company. Interested in understanding self funding, angel investors, venture capitalists, crowd funding and the other ways to fund your business better? If so, get this book.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ant Publishing House
• Release date: Oct 5, 2015
• ISBN: 9781519916273

Andrew D. Ive

Andrew spent his early career at world class blue chip marketing and innovative organization Procter & Gamble (Europe) Ltd. but high growth and white space opportunities is Andrew's passion. While at Harvard, Andrew took an unformed opportunity and created value - starting from a new product idea, founded X-IT Products, named one of United States ‘Top 10 Start-ups’ by a leading Entrepreneurial magazine and went on to win a ‘Business Week’ product design award. Andrew established a manufacturing facility in China and recruited a sales force to sell his first solo product into major US retailers. Andrew and the X-IT Product ladder were involved in a legal case that resulted in the largest corporate award in Virginia State history for his investors.  Andrew then founded a Silicon Valley company focused on solving data challenges between manufacturers and retailers. While CEO, Andrew built and led the executive team; Chaired the Board; raised $21M of capital, and began new partnerships and customer relationships with Home Depot, Black & Decker, BJs and others.   Recently, Andrew joined a small software/SAAS Silicon Valley based company and spent six years focused on driving strategic relationships, working with the core team to grow and prepare that company for an IPO. Model N successfully went through the IPO March 2013. Andrew has expertise in innovation, developing new markets, new initiatives and high growth businesses opportunities. He has served on the Board of the Small Business Council of the Department of Trade and Industry advising the UK Government on entrepreneurialism and high growth companies; worked with the National Science Foundation, the Investment Task Force (UK Government Task Force) and Centre for Policy Studies, Small Business Council (UK Think Tank focused on Small Business).

Book preview

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form whatsoever, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any informational storage or retrieval system without express written, dated and signed permission from the author.

Solely for educational and entertainment purposes (Read before Continuing)

Although the author and publisher have made every effort to ensure that the information in this book was correct at press time, the author and publisher do not assume and hereby disclaim any liability to any party for any loss, damage, or disruption caused by errors or omissions, whether such errors or omissions result from negligence, accident, or any other cause.

This book is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes. The author and publisher are not offering it as legal, accounting, or other professional services advice. While best efforts have been used in preparing this book, the author and publisher make no representations or warranties of any kind and assume no liabilities of any kind with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents and specifically disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness of use for a particular purpose.

Neither the author nor the publisher shall be held liable or responsible to any person or entity with respect to any loss or incidental or consequential damages caused, or alleged to have been caused, directly or indirectly, by the information or programs contained herein. No warranty may be created or extended by sales representatives or written sales materials. Every company is different and the advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for your situation. You should seek the services of a competent professional before beginning any business activity.

This book is an independent, stand-alone entity that has no relationship, connection, or affiliation whatsoever with any company, person, outfit, organization, or group mentioned herein, even if such name appears in the book.  You should assume no other party, by mere mention of their name, has endorsed anything you see here.  The aim is simply to provide useful resources for our readers, some of which we may be compensated for.  You should simply assume at all times we are being compensated and, while that may not prompt us to make unsound recommendations, you should always be responsible for your own financial decisions, be it investing, purchasing, donating, or otherwise.

This is not legal or financial advice - I am not a lawyer or a financial expert. Before making any legal or financial decisions, talk to your own legal or financial experts and advisors.

––––––––

© 2015 Advisor Garage LLC / Andrew D. Ive

CHAPTER ONE: Offering Help

Your ‘Why?’

Whatever your motivations for starting your own company - Making a difference in the world. Pursuing your true purpose. Doing something cool. Working with great people. Making yourself wealthy. Lost your job, retired or just starting over. A passion for something - whichever reason is relevant to you, many people start amazing, exciting, life and world changing, successful and unsuccessful companies every day and recreate their lives and those of everyone they touch. 

But whatever your personal reason for wanting to create your own company, getting the funds should not be a wall which stops you from starting your company.

I’ll make that point one more time, a lack of cash in your company’s bank account should not be the reason why your business doesn’t start or grow.

Now let’s unpack that point.

When I first went out to get funding for my first company, I did it while working a day job.  At that time I’d graduated from the Harvard Business School with an MBA and had an extended network like you wouldn’t believe - so guess how long it took me to raise my first investor funding? A week? A month? Six months?

I wish it have taken any of those.

The first time, with everything going for me, it took more than a year and it’s worth sharing that I worked on my startup business every day - this wasn’t a once every so often effort. I was driven, persistent and thought it was going to take a month or two at most.

Hindsight is a Bitch

A few years since that time has given me the benefit of hindsight. It was a year or two after I’d moved on from that company before I sat down and dissected exactly why it took me that length of time and that insight came about by accident. Having returned for a year or two to the United Kingdom, the UK government asked me to sit on a Board of the Department of Trade and Industry, to advise on how to make the country more entrepreneurial. The department had undertaken what they called, The Big Survey. This was a survey of all companies in the United Kingdom, asking them about their businesses, challenges and opportunities.

The results of that study was in two parts - first, that there was no shortage of funding for companies and second, the reason why entrepreneurs and companies had challenges raising money was...because they weren’t investment ready.

I was pissed when I was told that. Think about those two points for a second.

i)  There’s plenty of money available for companies but the reason why they don’t get the money is because they ii) aren’t ready to take it.

As an entrepreneur who had spent more than a year looking for investors, this study was saying I’d spent all that time unsuccessfully raising money, because I and my startup wasn’t ready or developed enough to get the investors to say Yes.

How dare they!?!?! I was completely pis...

Then, like a plank upside my head, I got it.

Crap!  No - I hadn’t been ready during most of that year raising money...

Damn they were right...

Over the next month I really broke down where I and my business had been when we first starting raising money and where it was (and our pitch had got too) when we got our first $250,000 from our angel investors.  Yes I had spent a year looking for money before getting my investors but I hadn’t sat and waited while I waited for the money, I had moved my business forward. Moving it forward to the point where investors were prepared to risk their hard earned money on me and my business.

Does this mean you will find it near impossible to raise money for your business?

No - that’s to why I wrote the above paragraph - the points I’d like you to take away are i) there are funds available to you but ii) you and your business have to be truly ready to get the funds. Now to be ready does not mean wanting funding, being desperate for funding or needing funding. It means being aware of the sources of funding and what you need to show and provide to be able to secure that funding.

As someone who has raised funds from various sources I’d like to share that it’s neither easy not impossible to raise money for your business - to raise that money, a few important considerations....

You need to know the most appropriate funding sources for your stage of business, how to reach out and engage them, what those sources need so they can make a decision. Then you need to go do it.

That’s what this book is about.

There are a variety of ways to get funding for your business. This book will take you through some of the main ways, take you through some of the nuances, and the watch outs.

IMPORTANT:

When writing this book I’m not bringing together a variety of definitions for academic purposes. Sure I could go to dictionary.com or Wikipedia and start pulling the ‘academic’ definition of everything but my purpose is to give you a real world view – For example, if you want to know how angel investors are defined, by all means head over to one of those sources and read all about them. 

No - what this book is about is the real world practical (and personal) insights regarding each of these sources. The definitions, thoughts and suggestions are all mine based on my experiences working with these different funding sources and other entrepreneurs to get funding. I’m sure I’ve made mistakes and they’ll be academic folks who will disagree with my definitions and suggestions - they’re welcome to do so. I may even take the good suggestions on-board.

However, the person I most want feedback from is you. After reading through this book - I’d like to hear from YOU. If you have suggestions, questions or feedback – Reach out. This is the first edition – they’ll be mistakes and omissions. Let me know via andrewive.com or thefundingguru.com.

You can find more tools we’ve created to help entrepreneurs just like you from my website that was named and created way before gurus got a bad name:

http://www.TheFundingGuru.com

CHAPTER TWO: Overview

Something for Nothing?

You