Meet the Team, Follow Progress and Enjoy the Ride

This blog is about the lives of a few entrepreneurs who are aiming to establish the next trend in social networking and the concept that will make it happen. Since our venture is all about connecting people together, we want to be involved and connected to you and we want you to be involved and connected to us. We'll be sharing with you: who we are, how we got started, how we’re doing and where we’re going...we're taking you along for the ride!!

Wednesday, May 30, 2007

The Road to Funding (Part 1)

Bumps, severe curves, road blocks, detours and a few dead ends…are all part of going down the road to securing funding for a new venture. I guess, to some extent, we haven’t gone about this completely the right way, so driving school is initially recommended as well. We ended up putting all our eggs in one basket, instead of spreading the joy and seeing how many investors we could get to bite and THEN go with the best option.

Once we were getting closer to having the business plan completed, I started doing some research into venture capital (VC) funding and angel investors. More about what I learned in later posts, since this is still ongoing and I’m still learning, but I included links to Wikipedia in case anyone wanted some definitions of what I’m talking about.

VC Funding:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venture_capital

Angel Investors:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angel_investor

Now, there are other options to raising funds, such as, finding companies who specialize in raising funds through their own pool of qualified investors (we actually found such a company and ended up declining their offer, which might have been a mistake, but we’ll never know) or finding a broker who acts as the middle man. There are a lot of fakes and scammers out there, so this can become risky and confusing. We definitely have been keeping our lawyer involved throughout the process.

The reading I did, did little to make me feel better about our odds with VCs, or to ease the stress that seems to be involved in the due diligence process and I also wasn’t too sure we would get to maintain the majority of our company, once it was all said and done. On top of it all, the entire process appeared to take forever and could end up not panning out.

I was being extremely unrealistic; I wanted guarantees and the money right away. In retrospect, besides being unrealistic, I was being impatient like a five year old kid in a grocery store, who not only desperately wants a candy bar but wants to eat it right there and then instead of waiting till after dinner like a good kid. I wanted a miracle. I wanted someone to show up, read the plan, ask little to no questions, fully trust us, give us the money and then give us the leeway to make it all happen.

I’m finally done being delirious. I want Why Go Solo more then words can express, so I’ll do whatever it takes to see it come to life, which includes, being patient. I’m not saying it’s easy at all, it’s actually exceptionally painful. Deep in my heart, I still want a miracle, while my head tells me, it’s time to be pragmatic.

The One Basket

The one basket we placed all our eggs into is a man I met back in November. His intentions to help us are truly sincere, what I’m not fully sure about at this point are all the other factors, which have to first come into play for him to be able to help us. He needs to close a few deals of his own to be able to focus on us and have funding himself to help. Faith is an amazing and wonderful thing, but sometimes it simply takes more then faith alone. Faith and action are what make things and miracles happen.

The Road Map

The way we are going to forge ahead is by re-engaging with VCs and Angel Investor Networks. We are going to take a closer look at our own network and see who might be able to get us personal introductions to some investors. We are back at square one. Well, not completely back at square one…we are a little wiser, better prepared and stronger in a few different ways.

I’m going to review the business plan and finish the online applications I started a while back and have faith and hope that we will attract many interested investors. I’m ready now and prepared to go through whatever process they have for us.

No comments: