Hot Tips for Raising Venture Capital
I attended a really superb event last week for female entrepreneurs who are looking for finance to run their expanding, or in some cases start-up, businesses. Now, I realise that I’m neither a woman, or looking for finance for my business, but I received an invitation from the fabulous host Simone Brummelhuis and decided I couldn’t turn down the opportunity. And I am so pleased I didn’t! Simone organised a great evening, something along the lines of Dragons Den, but more friendly and much more inspirational.
I learned a few things from the speakers and the entrepreneurs about pitching which may well come in handy in the future. But for now I thought I’d write up a few things that stood out the most and which you might find interesting:
- “Only 1% of applicants for venture capital / funding actually get the funding” Emmett Kilduff, cmypitch.com
- When pitching for funding, make sure your presentation delivers “immediate grasp and immediate gasp” Andrea Cockerton, Mudhut. In other words, you need to clearly explain what your proposition is and then how it is possible to extract the commercial value.
- Explain how you can scale up your business. An investor will only back your venture if it they can see that it will clearly cope with strong growth. If your business model requires your every attention in person, it will not be able to support rapid growth and therefore the return will be harder to come by.
- Have a strong team in place with some industry experience. Those companies that performed the best on the evening had real industry expertise in their executive team, which is something to bear in mind.
- When pitching, you can more or less leave out the financial predictions from your presentation. Pretty much all of the panellists agreed the figures are generally pie in the sky and investors are much more likely to invest in a person and a business idea. To make that seem more credible, the panellists included Anna Sofat from Addidi Business Angels, Shaa Wasmund from Smarta.com, Judy Gibbons from Accel Partners, Andrea Cockerton from Mudhut, Julie Meyer from Ariadne Capital and Bill Morrow from Angels Den.
Some food for thought in any case. Now, I’ve just got to create a good idea for how to make my second million (OK, so that’s my first million then). Huge well done to all the panellists who took part in the pitching by the way, some fantastic businesses and business ideas: Outbox, balineum.com, WorldMalls, degreeart.com, moretolifethanshoes.com, Hg2.com.
Tag:General
Task Management 101
An associate of mine, who is a very organised and driven businessman, recently showed me how he prioritises his workload to make sure he spends his time on the right tasks. He essentially divided a sheet of A4 paper into quarters and catagorised each task based on its urgency and importance. You can see what I mean with this diagram…
I thought this was great, but I also recently learned of another technique developed by Brian Tracy, author of a book called ‘Eat That Frog’. Brian’s book is all about how to stop procrastinating and manage your time and, it’s also now on my shopping list. Brian’s technique is called the “ABCDE method” and it prompts you to categorise your tasks based on whether they will have consequences to your business, whether a tasks needs attention because it will affect your business, tasks you can delegate etc. To get the full story, either read the book, or check out Aurelius Tjin’s post (and then buy the book) and watch his video.
Now, both techniques look pretty good to me, but they can actually be combined quite nicely. Essentially anything that is important and urgent, is a task that you must do to avoid consequences, whereas a task that is important but not urgent, you can probably delegate. Anyway, I combined into the chart below which I’ll be using from now on. Hopefully by properly categorising my task load, I can identify areas for prioritisation, delegation, or where I should simply let the task drop as it will not affect my business.
I would love to hear what time management and prioritisation techniques everyone else uses. I’m sure there must be some fantastic ideas and resources, whether simple paper based techniques as I’ve mentioned above, or maybe through Outlook tasks etc. Please, what works for you?
Tag:GeneralMarketing Procrastination
I found a fantastic quote recently about procrastination - you know, when you defer something until later, like making a decision..
In any moment of decision the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing.
Theodore Roosevelt
Why is this important for internet or small business marketers? Because it emphasises the importance of taking action. Marketing requires a continuous drip feed approach to develop momentum, therefore making decisions and taking action regularly is very important.
The next time you put off a decision until tomorrow, just remember those wise words from Teddy.
Tag:GeneralReader Poll Results
Every month I will be adding a new reader poll to my blog. In the last month I asked the question:
What would you like me to write about on this blog?
The answers, in order of popularity, were:
37.5% Internet marketing
25% Blogging
12.5% WordPress plugins
12.5% Small business marketing
12.5% Making money online
You can guarantee that I’ll be writing a lot more on internet marketing topics from now on, with a little less on making money online, WordPress plugins and small business marketing.
I’ve added this month’s poll - you can find it on the right hand side bar - which asks which internet marketing tactics work best for you. Please make your choices now and feel free to add a comment if there are tactics I haven’t added that are working for you.
Tag:General-
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