Find Investors & Raise Capital for your business.
Part-1
There’s more than one way to find investors, raise capital and to get on the radar of those with the capital and knowledge you need to grow your budding enterprise.
It’s hard to believe, but finding investors is not the hard part in fact, through the process of trying to raise capital, an entrepreneur might have opportunities to talk to many investors, depending on their business model and unique idea.
However, just as it takes a great idea and presentation to find success, it also requires a motivated investor. An investor who works in the same field as your company, one who is able to provide assistance and knowledge throughout the development of the company and most of all, an investor who can come to a reasonable financial agreement that suits all parties involved.
Even the best funded and successful million dollar start-ups have been engaging in more fund-raising rounds than ever before.
No matter how good your product or business concept is, you will still need to find investors to gain the necessary financial leverage to grow your business.
Thankfully, for today’s entrepreneurs, we have seen increasing new ways start-ups are getting noticed, found and connected with potential investors.
1) Raise Capital with Blogging
Blogging to find investors is one of the most underestimated methods of raising capital. Blogging about your business, progressing potential investors through the learning process of wanting to invest in you, and remaining on their radar through each series of fund-raising.
Creating a basic corporate website using the many WordPress themes as a website builder, along with good SEO practices, can launch your business idea into the laps of many quality investors.
Even without a corporate website or blog of your own yet, you can publish via LinkedIn.
Moreover, another good option is to go to the blogs of the investors that you are looking to target. They all read their comments and often engage with responses. Leave a thoughtful comment to get noticed and start building the relationship from there.
A simple search in Google can provide many well funded individuals who are looking for new ideas to place their money.
Investors that are probably the most active right now on blogs include:
•Bill Gurley
•Fred Destin
•Brad Feld
•Matt Turck
•Seth Levine
•Jalak Jobanputra
•Tomas Tunguz
2) Raise Capital with Email
Simple emails have proven to be able to get the attention of notable angel investors and VCs. They have been responsible for the launch of some very important and notable start-ups.
Building or acquiring lists of Angel/VC investors can be done with a basic search on the internet. Or working with an experienced OTC PR Firm you can tap extensive databases and networks without the need of building your own.
3) Raise Capital & Apply to Accelerators
Accelerators offer entrepreneurs good opportunities early on. Founders get help to quickly grow their business and they often better their chances of attracting a top venture capital (VC) firm to invest in their startup at a later point. Still, the programs are different frameworks for startup success.
Popular start up accelerator programs always have an open invitation for applications from serious entrepreneurs. If accepted, you’ll likely get a modest amount of funding to keep developing your work, as well as introductions to other investors, business advice and help in staging future fund-raising rounds.
Typically Accelerator programs include a demo day. This is when the start-ups attending the program pitch to a crowd of investors.
Startup accelerators and incubators can get involved at all stages of a startup’s development, from idea stage to revenue-generating, late stage.
Startups are usually admitted in batches, with many incubators and accelerators offering 1-3 batches per year. Some focus on a specific industry, market, technology, stage, or other thesis, whereas others are more generalists.
Accelerators and incubators have been very successful in helping startups attain success, being admitted to a startup accelerator or incubator is not a guarantee for success to a startup founder, and not a guarantee of a sound investment for a startup investment.
I would highly recommend to do extensive research to verify the type of success stories and the track record from such programs. You may be better off using that equity that you intended to allocate to the Accelerator to create instead a very active board of advisers and incentivize them to help with making investor introductions.
4) Raise Capital Buy Sharing Your Product
Fund-raising and growth needs to be strategic to be successful. Yet, far too many entrepreneurs and start-ups aren’t focusing enough on just getting their product or service out there in the hands of customers, influencers, and in turn, in front of investors.
If you can acquire real customers, you will be under less pressure to seek outside money. When you do, you can achieve better terms, from better investors.
At OTC PR Group we use our publishing sites and knowledge of the markets and industry to provide our clients with a better understanding on how to approach their marketing decisions. Your goals are our goals, which is why OTC PR engages in a true partnership with our clients. OTC PR has worked with a diverse group of talented and respected professionals whom have joined forces with us in order to create a cost effective advertising network dedicated to publicly traded Companies.
OTC PR Group founders utilize over 30 years of experience in managing awareness campaigns. We understand that increasing brand and investor recognition, as well as broker awareness through network marketing, can be an extremely daunting task.
OTC PR Group excels in providing you with the proper network media outlets because of the screening process we put list network owners through. This allows us to avoid the mistakes many people make and be sure that your news and story sends the right message to the right people at the right time.
