Why? Well, the webinar maxed out with 100 attendees plus me….fantastic!

People were engaged – asked questions – were engaged….great!

I focused on some real and specific ‘things you can do tomorrow’ to go out and start making REAL traction with angel investors…amazing!

And we spent two hours going through some great content – an hour over schedule and most of the 100 people stayed active and tuned in…incredible!

So why was it a train wreck?

Because I, jackass that I am, in my complete nervousness with my first webinar FORGOT to press the Go-To-Webinar button to SHARE my screen….

Yep! 100 people stuck around for two hours…LISTENING ONLY to the webinar and I didn’t know how to read the comments from folks saying “Hey Andrew – can’t see the slides….” or “Slides please…”

Two hours of NO slides – just blank page….and people stayed on the line. The mind boggles!

Thank you if you were on the call…I apologize for my technological ineptitude!

During the call I outlined that we’ll be offering something we’ve NEVER done before….

But it will only be available to a handful of people.

Find out more here and listen to a replay of last nights webinar…

Replay

Thanks

Andrew

PS – listen to a replay of the Webinar Train Wreck

Related posts:

1. What Are Angel Investors Looking For? Six Key Motivations of Angel Investors (#4)
2. Finding Angel Investors is All About Social Media Now – What BS!
3. Small Business: Angel Investors in Danger?

Seize The Day - Don't Wait!

Unfortunately, despite more resources than an entrepreneur can shake a stick at, the data of startup successes and failures has changed little over the decades – sadly, about nine in every ten companies still fail within their first few years, leaving behind the shells of companies that could have made it, along with the dreams of their founders.  But what has become clear, with the successful growth of companies like Microsoft, Google and Facebook and others, is that starting a company is perhaps the best track to achieving billionaire status through the creation and the ultimate sale of that business to the public market or a much larger company. In recent years, so many fortunes have been made and so quickly, that this era is unlike any in human history. Company founders are making more money, more quickly than ever before.

The question I think those of us who have the inner need to build businesses need to ask is – how are they doing it and can we do it too?

This time will soon pass and which of us want to look back and realize that the best opportunity of our lives was right in front of us and we had failed to grab it?

So again, how do people start and grow successful world changing businesses?

The answer to that question is broad but one thing I know for sure – funding and how and when its used – is a critical element.  When ever a business fails, central to that failure is nearly always the fact that business ran out of money and in my mind there are usually two reasons for that….

Either the processes and systems which underpin the business are flawed or the funding strategy and its execution are flawed.

Knowing when, how and under what terms to raise funds (and from whom) is critical for any companies foundation, growth and ultimate success.

I have spent the last twenty years focused on trying to understand what makes an entrepreneur and a startup successful.  I started my first company at college and over the last twenty years have both started and helped others start many businesses. In 1995, I left England and came to the United States to attend Harvard Business School and from the beginning, focused on getting under the covers of what makes a startup and an entrepreneur successful. While at Harvard, you guessed it….I started another business from my dorm room, a business that Inc Magazine called “One of the Hottest Startups of the Year” which ultimately paid out seven figures to its shareholders.

Returning to the United Kingdom, I focused on two projects – first, fixing a three hundred year old bank with a handful of business builders and sitting on the Board of the Department of Trade & Industry where I joined twenty entrepreneurs rigorously chosen by the UK government to advise them on startups and entrepreneurial ventures. My area of focus was funding and how critical it is to startup success.

Anyone that knows me well would probably be surprised that I focused on the fund raising side of the entrepreneurial equation – raising funds seems so ‘dry’ right?  I am what most would consider a people focused business builder – why did I focus on fund raising?

Its simple – having started multiple businesses and having helped friends start businesses, in my opinion its often the lack of the right kind of funding at the different stages of the business that cause many to fail. Raising capital may seem dry but just like any part of the successful startup fund raising equation – it’s both a science and an art form.

Like I said before, I am NOT a finance guy…I think if you persuaded someone at Harvard Business School to show you my transcripts from the finance test – you’ll probably laugh your ass off…from memory it was a ‘pass’ at best. I wish I could tell you the exact percentage but I’ve blocked it out as too painful to remember. But what I have done is go through the sometimes tortuous cycle of raising capital for businesses from angels and venture capitalists. I probably spent a full year or more walking up and down Sand Hill Road, the Venture Capital ‘Strip’ in Silicon Valley, looking for funds for one of my start-ups and a few more times after that with friends for their startups and high growth companies.

I’d like to underscore that last point – while building a business, I spent just about a full year diverting some of my attention and energy from the core business so I could focus on raising funds for it. At this point you may be saying – wow!  A year! Surely it didn’t take a full year? Well having hung out in too many coffee shops (read – free office space) and talking with other entrepreneurs walking up and down the same Venture Capital strip – spending up to a year to raise capital is not unusual. After all, we’re talking about a process which, if successful, can mean an injection of millions of dollars into your business while adding a seriously connected and motivated investors to the team.

But a year? Seems like an awfully long time right… (Short cut?)

Its true – and part of the reason for it taking that long was because I was learning the whole time…I was learning to raise decent amounts of investor capital.  Each meeting I managed to get, each presentation I prepared for and made, each lunch and negotiation I had was all part of the learning curve.  When I add up all the time spent raising capital, both from angels and from VCs – its quite a few years of learning.  Add to that the time I spent on the board of the Department of Trade & Industry for the UK government and fund raising has been a critical element of the startup process.

NOTE: Part of the reason why it’s an intense process if because it’s a serious amount of money.  The first Venture Capital round I completed brought in just over $5m to the business…and that number increased – for example, the next Venture Capital funds I raised came to just over $15m.

…but despite fund raising being a critical element of the startup process – I’ve found little real support for people starting businesses.  Yes there are blogs and sites that will take you through the bare essentials of what an angel and a venture capitalist are, their addresses, websites and even some of the difference between them all. But I still haven’t been able to find a step by step system that helps a person starting and growing business to raise the funds they need. Like any process, there are ways to do it well and pitfalls to avoid – yes, you can spend a year or so focused on raising the cash you need for your business and who knows, maybe you’ll get lucky and it will take only six months.

Or if you are here, maybe you’ve already started that process and are surprised at how tough its been so far to raise the money you need. One idea I’d like to get across right now is if you have already started on the pathway to raise capital and are finding it hard – you are probably thinking that Venture Capitalists and Angels are all tough S.O.Bs that wouldn’t know a good investment if it kicked them in the pants.  I’d like you to think about flipping your thinking…Why? Because I can absolutely state – without knowing which Angels or Venture Capitalists you’ve spoken too (if any!) – that they would like nothing better than to find the perfect company to invest in. If they met with the company they believed were perfect for them tomorrow – they WOULD invest. That’s their business, its why they get out of bed in the morning and how they pay for their kids braces and how they expect to send them to college.

So flip your thinking – if you have already tried to raise capital from different angels or a handful or more of venture capitalists and haven’t locked that cash in yet…the problem isn’t with the investors you’ve been speaking with – I can tell you…without knowing anything about you or your business…that your business, you and how you are going about raising the money you need, are the problem.

As I said – its part science and part art – oh yeah, and luck has its role to play too.  This system will help with the science and art parts – if you get those elements right, the luck will probably take care of itself. After all, luck can only do so much…and if you do it right, you can help create your own luck. But if you want to just rely on luck, why not try all those free resources – after all, only 9 out of every 10 companies fail using that route.  You might find out, after a year or two, that you were one of the lucky ones…

Interested in finding out more?

Join my email list and I’ll send you an update when we have more information.

Good luck with your funding.

Andrew

PS: Here’s a taster of the course which will help your fund raising

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1. Help Raising Funds for Startups: The Dragon Slayer

The Dragon Slayer - Slaying the Investor Dragons

Received some questions today from readers so thought I would answer them via a post – just in case other readers wondered the same thing.

What is the Funding Guru all about?
The Funding Guru is all about helping entrepreneurs and startups go through the process of fund raising through either angel or venture capital investors. We do that through writing posts on subjects that relate to the process of fund raising, on the dos and don’ts; the tools (such as executive summaries http://www.thefundingguru.com/how-do-i-write-an-executive-summary/ ); business plans; pitch presentations and covers more peripheral elements such as the psychology of the process – i.e. helping entrepreneurs to get into the motivations of the investors and we also include podcasts and videos with investors and other entrepreneurs.

Talking to a reader this morning – he mentioned at first glance the site could be about us at The Funding Guru making the investments ourselves – almost like a Dragon in the Dragons Den giving cash to startups after some analysis. That is not the case.  We invest our time (a much more precious resource than cash – wouldn’t you agree?) on helping entrepreneurs get ready to meet and go through the fund raising process and negotiate the deal with investors – so we don’t made investments ourselves – we’re more Dragon Slayers than then Dragons themselves. I would love to take credit for that line about us but cannot so full credit to Erik Luhrs (http://guruselling.com/blog/)

The funding guru is not about making financial investments in startups or young companies or even about hooking them up with investors – there are legal restrictions that would not allow us to broker deals between startups and investors. These dealer / broker relationships are closely monitored and regulated by the SEC – we do not do deals and we are not middlemen between two interested parties.

How can you help me find an Investor?
Now its true we have some great relationships with angels and the venture capital community and occasionally may introduce a particularly exciting startup to an angel or VC but never for financial or equity gain or because of any ‘deal’.  I do it when I am very excited by a company and see a fit between the different investors I know and I never ever gain from either the referral or the deal. Hope that clears that one up.

Here’s another way I’d like to help – if you are looking for an investor – consider reaching out to me via the contact page above and telling me about your business with a few well written paragraphs – if they are exciting, perhaps I’ll put them up on the blog and encourage interested people to reach out to you directly.

What’s it like being The Funding Guru?
Ah – a great question! A steady stream of fantastic entrepreneurs send me their executive summaries and their business plans pretty much every day. The opportunity to help entrepreneurs is a gift and I appreciate it. So – keep sending me your executive summaries and your business plans – I’ll gladly look through them and do my best to give you feedback on how they can be improved so you can increase your chances of getting angel or venture capital investors.  I was on a plane yesterday thinking about the various entrepreneurs who had reached out recently and thought it may be useful to them and the other readers if I took some elements of these plans and summaries, scrubbed them for data that would be propriety and leverage them to show what entrepreneurs are doing well and perhaps not so well. Real world case studies instead of the usual higher level stuff you usually get from blogs in this space. LET ME KNOW IF THAT WOULD BE HELPFUL!?!? and if you would like to even be one of the first Funding Guru lab rats.

Where are your ads?
Another great question. As you can see, there are no ads on this blog. Actually, that’s not entirely accurate, there are ads for a few free reports which I’m offering as ‘ethical bribes’ to encourage you to join my list. Why? Because I’d like to build a relationship with those people who like to read this blog and the best way to do that is to meet you all – face to face…obviously that’s not going to happen as much as I’d like so comments on the blogs and emails are a close second to actually meeting. So – no ads for other people’s stuff – just my own free stuff and this allows me to focus on creating value and helping you and other entrepreneurs who come to the site – maybe at some point I’ll put an ad or two. We’ll see. One idea I’m mulling over is if there is the opportunity to help early stage companies more systematically and directly – i.e. rather than writing a twenty minute blog – perhaps spend a two or three hours going through the executive summaries and business plans directly and unearthing the hidden veins of gold that run through them to improve the speed and likelihood of getting those coy and hard to get investors locked in.

Would this be a service anyone would need? Hum….

Do you have guest bloggers / writers?
Well I haven’t so far but would its actually a great idea providing the guests have some value to add to the readers. So – if you are an entrepreneur, an angel or a venture capitalist and would like to write a guest post – email me before writing anything and lets chat about what you’d like to contribute – no promises but if its good and if it will help entrepreneurs raise cash then I’m all for it.

Who is the Funding Guru again and what makes you think you can help?
I could spend the next 500 words trying to impress you but take a look around, watch this ( Who is the Funding Guru?) and if you still have questions – contact me through the ‘contact’ page above – I respond to all my emails and comments.

So – I’m not a broker or a dealer but I do often connect entrepreneurs with angels and venture capitalists if they are ready for those conversations. I am open to work directly with entrepreneurs to get them ready for that investor conversation. It would be great to get some high value add contributors to the site, we don’t advertise anyone else’s stuff and I truly appreciate all the emails I get and the ability to help exciting entrepreneurs start and grow great new businesses.

Any more questions?  Reach out via the contact page above and join my mailing list by adding your name and email in the box to the right. I’ll also send you some valuable downloads to help…and if you want to get started raising money today…this will help save you months…(Supercharger)

Andrew

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A game of chance

Maybe you’ve been to a Casino and seen a roulette wheel or perhaps you haven’t – either way, everyone is probably familiar with the game.  There is a wheel with pockets and inside the pockets. Within those pockets of red and black are the numbers – from 1 to 36 and a zero (or double zero) on a green background. 

The wheel is spun in one direction and a white ball is sent in the opposite direction. After the whirr of the rotation comes a click, a bounce and a few more clicks and bounces as the ball hits the sides of the pockets, initially rotating too fast for the ball to settle. As both slow, the small white ball and the wheel both eventually stop the ball sitting inside one of the numbered pockets. That is roulette – a game millions of people have played for the excitement and the chance of winning their fortune– just like a Start-Up!

And just like pretty much every game of chance, people have spent hundreds of years trying to get an edge – a way to shave points off the odds in their favor, with the hope and belief that having a slightly better chance than the House and the next person – they’ll win their fortune.

If you’re reading this blog post – you may not be a gambler, you may not have any interest in gambling – I’m hoping you are here because you are interested in starting or building a business and you are interested in raising money from investors for it. Well folks – you are one of the biggest gamblers there is on the planet – whether you lay your chips on a table in a Casino or not. Make no mistake – starting a business and going into the entrepreneurial ‘Casino’ is risky – and you’re not laying down plastic chips – you are laying down seconds, minutes and hours of your life in the pursuit of something that may be great! And do you know what else?

You should look to optimize the percentages in your favor…

There may not be a House that will take your chips if you lose – but that time you spend on building a new business does not get put back in your life wallet – you spend them, they’re gone.

So how can you weigh those precious percentages and do your best to tip the chances of success more in your favor?

Well, I can think of a few ways but there a many…

1) Try to find someone who has trod the same path you are about to tread – and save yourself some time by trying to understand the opportunities and pitfalls that they experienced. Learning just a few of both will make the time you invest in finding and learning from a good mentor is incredibly worthwhile. It will pay off in dividends of time and money saved.

2) If you are going out to get Venture Capital funding – Andreas, the MD from DFJ I just interviewed, made a point which continues to resonate with me.  Self filter when reaching out to a VC – taking even a cursory amount of time to understand which VC partners are likely to be interested in your business model will increase your chances of success.

3)  When introducing yourself to a VC through either a contact or directly – avoid the templates, the Dear Sir / Madam’s, the cut and pastes - unlike Roulette, finding an investor is not a numbers game – sending a standard form letter to a hundred Venture Capital partners is likely to get you a hundred rejections. How often do you buy when you get an envelope through your front door addressed to ‘The Resident’? Yeah me too!

Now, I’ve been working on a number of tools which I’m confident will tip the playing field in your favor but I going to hold off from launching them quite yet. I want input from more folks so I’m 110% sure they’re ready  and 120% confident they’ll help entrepreneurs optimize their chance of winning the Investor Jackpot- 

But like I said above, raising money from Angel Investors or Venture Capitalists is not a numbers game – but you can certainly increase your likelihood of success – and when you are trying to raise One hundred thousand, or one million or one hundred million dollars – don’t you think you should try to improve the odds in your favor?

If you would like to improve your chances…consider signing up to my mailing list.

As always, I would really appreciate any thoughts or comments.

Andrew

PS – for a short time I have an audio course which could seriously help your fund raising. I’ll soon bundle it with a broader course so it could be pulled from availability at any time.

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Just under a month ago I put some simple questions together focused on fund raising and asked you, the people who read this blog, to respond.  Thanks to all the people that took the “45 Seconds Survey”.

I thought it would be useful to go through some of the data and comments and if you have not yet taken the survey – I’ll put a link at the end of this posting.

1. Do you think you will be raising funds for a business in the next 6 months?

50% Yes
16.7% Maybe
33.3% No

2. If you will be raising funds for a business – where do you think you will focus?

80% Angel Investors
20% VCs or loans

3: How hard do you think it will be to raise funds for a business? Why?

80% Super Hard because…(A few representative comments)

“Economy is tight. “

“Never done it; not part of my network”

“Few contacts, poor economic climate”

4. What help or information would be critical in the next six months – either for funding or your Startup / business? (A few representative comments)

“What do I need to present to potential Angel funders? How do I find potential funders?”

“Connecting with interested investors…”

5. If you could have a magic button that would do ANYTHING for your Startup or growth business – What would that button do? (A few representative comments)

“Marketing. We don’t have the funds to spread the word.”

“Deliver my marketing message to a million people in a credible, trusted manner.”

 ++

There are a few elements that particularly stood out – I was surprised at the number of people who would actually be going out to investors in the next six months – more than 50%. Now that could be a factor of the people who read this blog (if so – you’ve come to the right place and thanks for reading…) – however, 50% + still seems high to me – what do you guys think?

Second, the overwhelming majority of people believe that Angels are the route to go to get the necessary capital to take their business to the next level – I found that extremely surprising – especially as Angels tend to get used earlier in the funding life cycle of a company. I would be shocked if 80% of the people who read this blog are just at those earliest stages. Assuming for a moment that there are readers with more mature growth companies – why is Venture Capital not more represented as a likely route for those to raise capital?

A few ideas –

1)     Is there a belief the VC industry has slowed down or is no longer lending?

2)     Are VCs tougher investors?

3)     Is it tougher to get through the door of a VC than an angel?

If you have a view – please add your comments.

And lastly – despite their being multiple websites and blogs out there – there still seems to be a lack of clarity around what VCs and Angels need to see as part of the investment evaluation process.  Well, interestingly enough – I’ve been working on some tools that could help with that process and as soon as they’re ready for prime time, I’ll let all those on the mailing list know more.

If you would like to add your views to the survey – I’ll keep it open for a short while longer.

Click Here to take survey

Any comments or thoughts – please attach them and I’ll do my best to respond.

Andrew

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2. Help Raising Funds for Startups: The Dragon Slayer

We would meet regularly as a board, look at programs to stimulate small business, proposed laws and regulations, meeting with tens of venture capitalists, angel investors and private equity folks at a time, as well as other small business owners around the UK and Europe. My area of interest and where I spent most of my time and energy was being a part of the Small Business Investment Taskforce looking at funding for small business and the Angel/VC and Private Equity Communities. This whole experience was challenging, stimulating and the learning curve was hyper incredible – it was seriously a once in a life time opportunity and worth going back to the UK for (after it finished, I went back to the US…)

So what has this to do with you having problems raising money?

Well, one of the insights this extended group came up with and reinforced by a monumental survey they undertook for a few years (called The Big Survey) – was that there was “no shortage of cash for small business” and just so you know, part of this study and the research after included looking at the startup environment in other countries – Europe, Australia and the United States. Supposedly, this was true not just in the UK but in those countries too…

I’ll pause there because, if you have tried or are trying right now to raise money for your business, you may have just fallen off your chair. Get up and I’ll type it in again so it doesn’t get missed.

One conclusion they came to was … “There is no shortage of cash for small business (…and startups)”

Now, when they tried to tell me that as an entrepreneur that has gone through the hot and sweaty crucible of raising millions of dollars by giving pints of my blood, crying into my startup pillow late into the night, and gnashing my teeth in absolute frustration - I found myself sitting on the edge of my chair and arguing – “Are you kidding? When you’re starting a business – finding cash is next to impossible…” I yelled across the boardroom, purple faced, heart racing.

With urgings to sit back down and wondering if they should call Security, they calmed me down and spent the next two hours is whispering my disagreement…

Do you know what they showed me – and what I’ve since had reinforced by multiple conversations with CEOs and Startup junkies?

And this is worth slowing down for too….

There is not a shortage of cash for startups and small businesses – even in this economically challenged times….do you know where there’s a shortage?

…there’s s shortage of companies that are READY to receive an investment from an angel or venture capital investor.

What?

Yep – You may think your business is ready to get cash from an angel or a VC – but maybe, just maybe, it isn’t.

It may not be that Investors have all gone on vacation just when you are raising money – it may be that either you are not yet investment ready or, and these two points could be true too… either…

1. There is a mismatch between where your business is versus what investors want to see or
2. You aren’t communicating where you business is at in the right way for investors to digest and get comfortable with.

Now this is big stuff – because if these points are right – perhaps it isn’t that there are no investors around, or that cash has all dried up – maybe, just maybe, you need to think different (read: rethinking…) about how you pitch your business or (and this might be tougher to accept…) perhaps you need to make a little more progress in your business before you are ‘investment ready’. But having raised $5M+ with a business plan, a couple of people and a concept after the dot com bubble had already burst – in my view – it’s probably the former – you may need to re-examine and rethink HOW you are pitching your business to investors.

Are you ‘investment ready’?

And how should I do that Andrew?

That – dear Reader – will be an extended topic for yet another blog post…

Until next time – please consider joining my mailing list and I’ll send you blog posts as and when we have updates.

How did this post hit you? Any comments? Or Questions?

If you found this useful or interesting please consider forwarding, tweeting or other some such way of spreading it to the masses. (I also do Kids parties and Bar mitzvahs… )

Thanks!

Andrew

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Join my mailing list for MORE!

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