Who To Approach During Early Stage Funding

I work with many people who are in various stages of preparing, capitalizing and launching their businesses. With regard to raising capital, I have found that spending some extra time on developing the proper foundation helps one attract the money like a magnet. Lack of preparation can make the entire capital raising process a struggle. One of the areas to focus on is to develop an active database of prospective investors. Here are some simple guidelines I recommend during this process.

1. Define who would have the most benefit from your success? This group of early investors could be family, friends or colleagues who know you and want to support your efforts from the beginning without requiring a lot of information about the business initially. Also, these people could ultimately become manufacturers or service providers to your new business so investing in you early on would assure them a place in line down the road.

2. Who could be a potential Strategic or Joint Venture Partner to your new business? Their investing early on would be likened to pre-selling your product or service. Could be a potential licensing partner as well.


3. Define who would be your ultimate customer or end-user of your product or service, and who would be emotionally connected to what you were doing? This is the next group I would focus on. For my fashion Company (www.cityscarves.com) it was typically women between the ages of 40-80 years old who loved beautiful things. For my first business, a chain of dry cleaners, people who were hotel or franchise owners that required dry cleaning services in their businesses were my early investors.

4. Look at ways to fund part of your start-up creatively through pre-selling of products and services, bartering of services, licensing deals, purchasing order financing, small regional sales tests, etc.

As you move out from your “warm market” you will be required to prove out more of your business concept but this will be easier to do with the momentum you will be building with early investors.

To Your Success!
Maria Simone
www.manifestsuccessguru.com