Steli and Hiten share some uncommon nuggets of wisdom about fundraising for your company. These practical tips will help you approach fundraising in a smart and professional way. Tune in and take notes as Steli and Hiten hit the following topics:

  • Don’t over value one investor over the others. — Your business will change and investors will come and go.
  • Inform yourself. — Do your homework and learn how to fundraise.
  • Communicate with founders, not investors. — Develop a relationship with founders and eventually ask for an introduction.
  • Ask before you begin your fundraising. — This makes the investor feel special and important to the project.
  • Use your story for the sale. — Why are you doing this? Answer that question and you’ll have your pitch.
  • Don’t be a yes man/woman. –If an investor asks if you would be open to another platform or different direction, be honest in your answer. 
  • Make sure your business is making money while you fundraise. — A team should not sell together. Each member should have their job and stay in that realm. Fundraising should be done by one person.
  • Don’t gloss over or avoid major issues. These are things that may send red flags up to investors. Address the problems and be assuring.

Resources Mentioned:

venturehacks.com

Hacker News

We invite you to join our Facebook group.  It’s great to have such an incredible group of entrepreneurs out there making it happen every day.  We’d love to hear from you; please feel free to join our Facebook group and share your experiences, challenges, and motivation with us and the rest of Startup Chat community.

We appreciate having your email address at The Startup Chat  because we’ll be sharing some special podcast episodes and other things exclusively with the people on our email list.  Click the link above and fill out the email address box to become part of the community today!

As always, you can hit us up on Twitter @Steli or @hnshah, #thestartupchat.