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Securing Venture Capital Funding for Your Business

by Tim Berry

You probably know all of this already, but here are some refresher tips on how to secure funding for your business:

  1. Polish your business plan. Re-read the executive summary, management team, competitive edge, and financials. If you’re operating in Internet space in the present market, make sure you are generating traffic and focusing on marketing much more than profits.
  2. Develop your summaries. Summaries are critical to the Venture Capital process. You don’t send business plans to VCs until they’ve asked for them. Instead, you send summaries to establish interest. Many VCs prefer emails (just a few paragraphs) to faxed or written summaries, so you need to prepare both: a compelling business plan summary to communicate with investors, and a brief but exciting email, one page at most, outlining the growth prospects, type of business, and potential investor payoff. Prepare an investor summary memo, 5-10 pages at most.
  3. Select VCs carefully. Don’t shop your plan. Instead, research your VCs carefully, looking for deal size, industry, and geographic preferences that match your plan.
  4. Approach selected VCs correctly. For the VCs whose criteria match your plan, find out how they want you to submit your plan to them. Know whether they prefer email summaries, summary documents, phone calls, or whatever. This is a matter of millions of dollars, so do it right. If you have Business Plan Pro, then you can eventually invite a potential investor to read and comment on your plan on Secureplan.com.
  5. Make sure you have a good relationship with an experienced attorney. You definitely need the right legal help to make a real deal. Make sure your attorney has been through similar deals; if not, then they should recommend a specialist instead. Investment deals are serious business.
  6. If you don’t find anything, what’s next?

General Resources

{ 2 trackbacks }

The Right Funding for Your Business Type - Business Plan Help & Small Business Articles - Bplans.com
March 13, 2009 at 10:00 am
Business | Plans | Strategy | Management | Loan | Business Plan
August 16, 2009 at 8:34 am

{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }

jerry smith June 28, 2009 at 12:30 am

I am an investor.We fund early stage-start-up ventures,existing Ventures and
do total completion and investment expansion projects.Leverage walk-in
equity on discounted commercial or residential purchases by employing our funds for
down payment & closing costs. Qualify for better Rate & Term based on a
lower LTV but still achieve high CLTV or $0 down financing. Funds available
for acquisition, rehab or carrying costs including CASH-OUT! Advance equity
fund disbursement based on verifiable walk-in equity. No income, asset or
credit requirements. Seasoned Funds for reserves and earnest money also
available. Brokers welcome!
Contact us for start-up funding,commercial RE Finance,seed capital,early
stage start-up ventures,Joint Venture/Partnership investment with liquidity
from our part,Loan,Mortgages.We can fund excess of $10M.
Send us an e mail on jscapitalinvestmentinc@gmail.com

Jerry Smith

raj raj July 16, 2009 at 12:44 am

In response to Jerry Smith, would you be interested in investing a project in India? let me know . Raj

raj raj July 16, 2009 at 12:50 am

Are you interested in investing in India? You will get higher interest rate forthe investment. I am starting a new project and need funding for the start up projecct. I have realestate as collateral in India. But these are prime properties in India. You may call me at 616-949-1837 or rajinivf@hotmail.com

Glibal Marines & Logistics international Ltd July 31, 2009 at 3:44 am

We are a maritime,and engineering and management services consortium in West Africa. We are seeking partnership investors in these and the Inland shipping sector of the gulf of Guinea covering Cameroon,Equatorial Guinea,Gabon,Republicof Congo,Sao Tome and Principe, and Nigeria.
We have been involved in all these and related services over several years as contractors or agents and now we are seeking for foreign partners to expand to operate in the Gulf of Guinea as principals.
Please check our website for more information on our services.
The proposal on inland shipping in the gulf of guinea has been developed and a copy of the business plan is available.If you are interested in investing in this sector in this region of Africa,we will send a copy of our business plan in the inland shipping and road transport sectors,including our other services.
Best regards,

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