Fund Your Business

Get the business funding you need to secure your success The issue of funding is one of the biggest pain points for small- and medium-sized businesses—and one that comes up on a daily basis. Whether you're unsure about how to go about getting a loan, unfamiliar with the different options available to you or confused as to which would be the right solution for your particular business, Business Funding For Dummies provides plain-English, down-to-earth guidance on everything you need to successfully fund your business venture. Friendly, authoritative, and with a dash of humor thrown in for fun, this hands-on guide takes the fear out of funding and walks you step-by-step through the process of ensuring your business is financially viable. From crowd funding and angels to grants and friends, families, and fools, it covers every form of funding available—and helps you hone in on and secure the ones that are right for your unique needs. Includes mini case studies, quotes, and plenty of examples Offers excerpts from interviews with financiers and entrepreneurs Topics covered include all forms of funding Covers angels in the UK and abroad If you're the owner or director of a small-to-medium-sized business looking to start an SME, but have been barking up the wrong tree, Business Funding For Dummies is the fast and easy way to get the funds you need.

Tapping into more than 33 years of small business expertise, the staff of Entrepreneur Media takes today’s entrepreneurs beyond financing their idea and opening their doors to keeping the cash flow flowing and the capital coming in through the first three years of ownership. • Defines funding options ranging from small business loans and angel investors to crowdfunding and venture capital. • Real-world examples of funding and financing plans that work. • In-the-trenches financing wisdom that help businesses stay profitable.

If you want your startup to succeed, you need to understand why startups fail. “Whether you’re a first-time founder or looking to bring innovation into a corporate environment, Why Startups Fail is essential reading.”—Eric Ries, founder and CEO, LTSE, and New York Times bestselling author of The Lean Startup and The Startup Way Why do startups fail? That question caught Harvard Business School professor Tom Eisenmann by surprise when he realized he couldn’t answer it. So he launched a multiyear research project to find out. In Why Startups Fail, Eisenmann reveals his findings: six distinct patterns that account for the vast majority of startup failures. • Bad Bedfellows. Startup success is thought to rest largely on the founder’s talents and instincts. But the wrong team, investors, or partners can sink a venture just as quickly. • False Starts. In following the oft-cited advice to “fail fast” and to “launch before you’re ready,” founders risk wasting time and capital on the wrong solutions. • False Promises. Success with early adopters can be misleading and give founders unwarranted confidence to expand. • Speed Traps. Despite the pressure to “get big fast,” hypergrowth can spell disaster for even the most promising ventures. • Help Wanted. Rapidly scaling startups need lots of capital and talent, but they can make mistakes that leave them suddenly in short supply of both. • Cascading Miracles. Silicon Valley exhorts entrepreneurs to dream big. But the bigger the vision, the more things that can go wrong. Drawing on fascinating stories of ventures that failed to fulfill their early promise—from a home-furnishings retailer to a concierge dog-walking service, from a dating app to the inventor of a sophisticated social robot, from a fashion brand to a startup deploying a vast network of charging stations for electric vehicles—Eisenmann offers frameworks for detecting when a venture is vulnerable to these patterns, along with a wealth of strategies and tactics for avoiding them. A must-read for founders at any stage of their entrepreneurial journey, Why Startups Fail is not merely a guide to preventing failure but also a roadmap charting the path to startup success.

Starting or growing a company? If you are thinking about raising money for your new business idea, your startup or existing company then this book will help. Understand what investors want, the investment sweet spot, how to pitch them, what they get for their investment, how to speed up the whole process and common mistakes which will could delay you by months. Comes with a range of Founder Tips that will put you ahead of your startup competition. Choose Your Startup: How to Fund Your Company focuses on the main ways to get money for any company. Interested in understanding self funding, angel investors, venture capitalists, crowd funding and the other ways to fund your business better? If so, get this book.

Secure Funding to Start, Run, and Grow Your Business! Starting a business is a journey. From the moment you come up with an idea for the next great product or service to the ribbon cutting and grand opening, you will travel a long, sometimes winding, road toward success. And like any other trip you take in life, this one costs money. While many startups begin with cash already in the bank (lucky them!), most aspiring entrepreneurs have to somehow come up with the cash to build their dreams, whether they choose to borrow, bootstrap, crowdfund, or go with venture capital. Discover: Bootstrapping tips and strategies to help you self-fund your business like a boss Traditional lending options and costly traps to watch out for The basics of borrowing from friends and family, the right way How corporate incubators and accelerators can give your business a jump-start The in and outs of launching a successful crowdfunding campaign Get the inside scoop on how to get the money you need and discover dozens of sources of capital.

Starting a business is the new American dream, so how do you fund it? Do you go to venture capital or crowdfunding, and what are all of these confusing funding options on google? Since the recession in 2008, it has never been more complicated or confusing to secure capital for your business. The Business Funding Formula creates an easy to follow step by step process to secure the very best funding you can qualify for guaranteed! Learn how the funding formula helped jump-start well known billion dollar businesses and precisely what you need to do to fund your start-up or existing business. Read how the author struggled to learn how to fund his own business and then began helping other entrepreneurs do the same. Are you looking for startup funding, large fixed rate loans, business lines of credit or even funding at 0% for the first year? The Business Funding Formula has the answers for every major funding option available to entrepreneurs today and most importantly will save you loads of time looking for funding solutions for your business.

The new edition of the definitive guide for venture capital practitioners—covers the entire process of venture firm formation & management, fund-raising, portfolio construction, value creation, and exit strategies Since its initial publication, The Business of Venture Capital has been hailed as the definitive, most comprehensive book on the subject. Now in its third edition, this market-leading text explains the multiple facets of the business of venture capital, from raising venture funds, to structuring investments, to generating consistent returns, to evaluating exit strategies. Author and VC Mahendra Ramsinghani who has invested in startups and venture funds for over a decade, offers best practices from experts on the front lines of this business. This fully-updated edition includes fresh perspectives on the Softbank effect, career paths for young professionals, case studies and cultural disasters, investment models, epic failures, and more. Readers are guided through each stage of the VC process, supported by a companion website containing tools such as the LP-GP Fund Due Diligence Checklist, the Investment Due Diligence Checklist, an Investment Summary format, and links to white papers and other industry guidelines. Designed for experienced practitioners, angels, devils, and novices alike, this valuable resource: Identifies the key attributes of a VC professional and the arc of an investor’s career Covers the art of raising a venture fund, identifying anchor investors, fund due diligence, negotiating fund investment terms with limited partners, and more Examines the distinct aspects of portfolio construction and value creation Balances technical analyses and real-world insights Features interviews, personal stories, anecdotes, and wisdom from leading venture capitalists The Business of Venture Capital, Third Edition is a must-read book for anyone seeking to raise a venture fund or pursue a career in venture capital, as well as practicing venture capitalists, angel investors or devils alike, limited partners, attorneys, start-up entrepreneurs, and MBA students.

For most people thinking of starting up in business, the biggest obstacle is how to raise the funds to get the business off the ground. This is the book to take the pain out of financing your start up – it explains all the possible sources of funding, and their pros and cons, before helping you work out how much you actually need, then what to say and do to land that investment. This is the book that provides the facts, the figures and the reassurances you need to make the right decisions for you and your business. It covers everything from finding investors, persuading them to back you, the principles of giving away equity and bootstrap start ups at very low cost – and everything in between. For each possible source of funding, from re-mortgaging and loans, business angels and venture capitalists, to some of the lesser known (and not advised) techniques like the “5 card trick”, we’ll walk through: what each is looking for; whether this is the right route for you; how best to find them and pitch to them successfully; how much they might be willing to lend; questions they will ask and questions you should ask. How to Fund your Business takes the fear out of finance, and looks at what happens if it all goes wrong and you need to borrow more – plus where you stand financially if the worst happens and the business doesn’t work. It’s also packed with advice to help you make sure this doesn’t happen, with vital sections on accurate budgeting and forecasting and managing cashflow so you don’t run out of money. Timelines show clearly at what point each type of investor will want their money back, and at what cost, to make sure you have no surprises along the way.