If you’re running a start-up business and you’ve been thinking about finding yourself some venture capital funding, you may not have the expertise or the experience to know where to look for funding and then what steps you should take to ensure you’ve given yourself the best chance of getting the funding you want. Here are a few pieces of friendly advice for anyone who is unsure as to the best way to secure your venture capital investment.
Get Your Business Plan Right
Venture capital funds are presented with thousands of business plans every single year. Because of this, you need to make sure that you’ve got the perfect business plan to give you a good likelihood of impressing the decision makers. A good business plan will contain a brief outline of your company, what you do and what you aim to achieve, competitors in your sector, your advertising and marketing strategy and your expected cash flow for at least the next 12 months.
Find the Right Investors
If you were looking into buying a certain product, you’d naturally do plenty of research so as to find the highest quality you can at the lowest possible price: finding the right venture capital fund to apply to has to be seen as a similar process and you need to put a lot of thought into deciding where to apply. Does the venture capital firm you’re looking at share things in common with your company? Do they specialise in investments in your industry? These are the kind of things you should be thinking about when you look at securing yourself venture capital funding.
Get Yourself a Lawyer
If it’s the first time you’ve set up a small business, you may not be completely up to speed with all the legal wrangling surrounding venture capital investment. In fact, even if you’ve run a business before, you still need to find yourself a lawyer who specialises in venture capital to make sure nothing untoward happens with your investment. Your lawyer will offer you advice, explain any legal terms and stipulations that you don’t understand and make sure they can get you the best investment possible.
Make and Introduction
You’ll make a much better impression on the venture capital firms you are targeting if you make the effort to find them and meet someone from their firm in person. Call and make an appointment to meet someone who can help you. When you go to the appointment, introduce yourself with confidence and explain briefly what your company does, why you’re looking for investment and perhaps run over a few key facts and figures if you have time. Make sure that you give whoever you met a hard copy of your business plan and some contact details. Now you’ve made an impression on a personal level and you’re more likely to get a response from the firm than if you merely sent your business plan to them by post.