So a buddy at Stone Henge is doing an event on raising venture for Columbia on Thursday night. Also, Bootstrapper’s good friend Mark Davis is also involved. We recommend everyone check it out -
STARTING AND FINANCING A NEW VENTURE IN THE CURRENT MARKET ENVIRONMENT
VCs and others who advise new ventures in New York discuss how to fund and grow your business in the current climate.
Event Date: Thursday, May 14th, 2009 at 6:00pm
So i’ve been working on helping build the community here for about 2.5 years. I’ve done it through my blog, 20+ events, conferences etc… and if you think about it, what have i accomplished? Nothing.
And there’s a very good reason for that - NYC is NYC, it is the hub for the world and its anonymous fort at the same time. NYC is not a community, it is a connection of groups. SV is a community. The only thing there is in the valley is a community around tech and so that’s the spirit of the place. NYC’s spirit is that it is the hub for disenfranchised masses and thus has no focus - nor likely will it ever.
There are 2 things needed to make our community have more teeth.
1. The investment community needs to actually connect with entrepreneurs.
It doesn’t right now. Not even close. In NYC, the venture association is VIANY (which Danny is on the board of) - VIANY does not do any events connecting its members with the entrepreneurial community. None. Now let’s look everywhere else. In LA, there is LAVA who does a lot of events connecting all sides. In the MIdAtlantic, there is MAVA, which has a tough job bringing together people from a myriad of places and does a good job. Both LAVA & MAVA supported my latest conference and I have a good relationship with both. VIANY did not despite numerous attempts at outreach. In the valley there are several organizations connecting everyone, the one that comes to mind the quickest is SVASE which has 10,000 entrepreneurs as members. They have more events than I can swallow and offer up their curriculum and coaching to people in other areas that want to develop the community. Guy Kawasaki did a road show across the world promoting it earlier in the year. What does NY have? Nothing. No one from the investment community has taken a lead at building the community. LAVA & MAVA are run by people in the investment community. SVASE has Guy, whose probably the most well known VC in the country. Who does NYC have?
The only person that really comes to mind for trying is Owen Davis at NYC Seed…he is in the right position to try and I absolutely love what he’s doing. But it takes more than that. It takes an ecosystem. It needs someone to step up and really build an organization bringing people together.
We have a number of organizations that try - NYSIA, SIIA, The Hatchery, NEXTNY (sorry Charlie), Connectors Group all have potential to do it but again, it’s a full time focused job to build a community. It just takes one person with the right drive and some support. Who wants to volunteer to lead the community? Without someone taking the reigns, it just won’t work. Why? I’ll borrow from my mentors book on this - most F500 companies use Open Source code. Most never check all of the code and are open to security breaches and end up fixing them after the fact - after the mess. An open source community works to a point but leaves a lot of big gaping holes. David Rose is trying to do this and he has a really great setup and structure going but it needs to go further.
I try - if you look at my events, we have as many cosponsoring organizations as guests sometimes but that only is a teeny tiny step - it needs to be someone in the investor side of the community and it needs to be someone to wear the mantle, not just support the cause.
Now, supporting the infrastructure needs to be better access to capital and more light on the process of raising it. We have tons of wealthy people in the tristate area who are in fact investors. We have in NYC, a number of angel groups (NY Angels, Golden Seeds, Connectors Group, Ivyplus) and several other organizations involved such as ASTIA. We have for the first time in a decade a number of seed investors in town. Owen & NYCIF at NYC Seed, Betaworks, Solidea, David Rose and his empire, Gil at Genacast, some of the former Quigo guys, Mike Walrath and Brian O’kelley from right media making investments, Esther Dyson & Jeff Pulver angel investing their eyes out, and going a step further we have the guys at First Round in PA. I remember talking to Owen a couple years ago when he was trying to raise what became NYCseed and he was worried if he could find enough companies to fund. And you know what - it’s really tough, there isn’t a lot of good ideas in nyc - because the ecosystem doesn’t support it - good ideas go to the valley. Lazer focused and advertising driven money making ideas tend to be in nyc. Good companies are built in NYC but not transformational companies. There isn’t enough support for transformational ideas here at the early stages. There just isn’t.
Here’s what I would do to jumpstart it - get together a small angel group and invite the 30 or so funds in town to come. Set up an office hours once a week where anyone can come in and pitch for 5 minutes. The good ideas then go out to the mailing list of everyone else and slowly but surely we have a central funnel where entrepreneurs know where to go for capital and an angel group supporting the infrastructure where there is a real chance of raising seed capital. In theory this is the NY Angels but they don’t actually make seed investments. A central resource is the key to organization. Open source is great if you can borrow components but did you know that most F500 companies use a lot of open source and that most F500 don’t know all the security holes in the code they have. There needs to be someone checking the code.
Looking beyond the centralizing access to capital. Let’s look a bit further …. there is no central mentor network (not that i know of) in NYC connecting successful serial entrepreneurs and investors with everyone else. Sure, you can pitch a VC and even build a relationship but that doesn’t mean there is an open channel of communication where you aren’t prejudged by the first version of your work in progress when in reality the core is looking for advice. Everyone pre-judges on first impression - yes - but the key is to formally set up the process of helping rather than asking as a one off. There is a reason for HS and College Guidance counselors. As much as we hated them, they served a very important purpose. Everyone needs someone to tell them they are full of shit from time to time and to help them get on the right track - not just tell them they are full of shit, close the door and say “come back when you’re no longer full of shit - maybe i’ll answer your emails then”….
Okay, say now have open communication and access to capital and advice from the seed stages on…what’s next? Well in the valley there is an ecosystem of big tech companies that buy everyone else or create channel partnerships and the like. In NYC, there is no ecosystsem, sure they are people that can do it but no structure. What does that take to accomplish this? Someone starting to do events and create a group to bring people together. We have SIIA, NYISA, The Hatchery all trying in some way but there needs to be greater outreach and it needs to go to every F1000 company with an office here and make the simple pitch “interested in new tech and potential acquisitions?” - well come on down, at least get on our email list so you know where to look. Most big companies don’t even know where to look until an investment banker shows it to them 3 years later. That process needs to change. The key to the city is that it is the worlds’ HQ. Why is it that when i go to just about any event in our “community” I see less than 1% of the audience representing all of these big companies?
What does centralizing information allow? A funnel and the ability to easily build buzz because you can reach the whole system in one click. That should be the goal. One Click New York.
That’s my 2 cents painfully learned from the last few years of trying to do this. It’s not even hard or very expensive. I’d say it requires someone stepping up, writing a $1MM check, getting a real driving force in the investment community and one person from the entrepreneurial side and one person from corp america behind it and then do it. Centralize the process so there is a funnel effect and at least so people know where to go for the first step.
So who wants to step up to the plate?
I’m the first volunteer to help whoever does.
Richie
So every VC deal and fund looks a tad bit different - so i will generalize for now. As i’ve said earlier, a major issue in the financing of a young company is at what point, does it not make any sense at all to keep self-funding a company (if you can help it!!!) and the reason is your dollar as an entrepreneur is not worth as much as a professional investors’ dollar. My suggestion to solve this issue is to allow the entrepreneur to investor in preferred stock along with the investor from the day they take on their first dollar of outside capital. Now some people let this happen but most of the time, the entrepreneur doesn’t stop for a second to realize he’s pissing money away. This usually happens at the angel state when the entrepreneur is funding the company along with other people. My contention is the day you take on outside $ (as long as something tangible exists - it’s your job to get a demo/alpha product live to show to real investors, however if you have to do it) is the day you should be able to invest $ along with the outside investor so that everyones interests are aligned.
You have no idea how many entrepreneurs would have been much better off had that they throw their founders stock out the window and just took the same $ they put into the company and put it into the Series A preferred stock. Anyway… til next time …
So I thought i would share notes on my keynote talk from the BootStrapper Venture Summit.
I spoke about the contradiction in the name of our summit, BootStrapper Venture Summit. Upon first glance, one might think that Bootstrapping and Venture Finance are polar opposites. However, they are not mutually exclusive. The most important question to ask yourself when it comes to how to finance your venture is “Do you ever plan on raising outside capital?”
The answer to that question should determine how you go about raising money. If you never plan on raising any outside money, then it makes sense to Bootstrap. However, if you think you may need to raise outside capital at any point (an IPO does not count) then there is a distinct point in the history of your company, where you should not be self-funding your venture. Now, before i say this - i need to state that it does not matter if you self-funded it with $50 and a handshake or $5,000,000, the point in the lifecycle of the company is the same and your first round of investors will likely value you the same way.
The day you launch your product into the market and generate your first $1 of revenue, should be the last day that you put your own money in the company. The reasoning is simple: Every dollar you put into your company goes in as Common Stock vs. Preferred Stock for your investors. Furthermore, the odds are (especially in NYC) that you will get the same Series A valuation regardless of whether you put that extra $250,000 in your company. Yes, many (most) investors will disagree with me but I’d venture a guess to say that if you look at the actual term sheets and compare them side by side for companies whose founders put in more $ after the product launched vs. stopped self-funding, they would look very much the same.
Of course, there are exceptions, sometimes you can’t raise outside capital and you have to invest yourself (i will do a follow up post in the future about how to invest cash in your own business after your launch) and sometimes you need to put a few more dollars in to prove your model. However, for all practical purposes, the day you launch is the day you should be trying to raise outside capital and stop putting your own money in. Your money is simply not worth as much as other peoples’ money.
Is this logical? NO. Is it the truth? Ask your happy go lucky local VC.
So one of the people that applied to the BootStrapper Venture Summit told me a story about how he raised capital … so i’ll repost it for everyone …
It is imporrtant to recognize that I always defined an angel as looking for investor-partners, not just investors. In addition to a good business idea is the acceptance as who I am as co-founder, including the appreciation of how much we could produce by bootstrapping. I found my first angel investor by placing breakfast invitations under the hotel doors of all the attendees to a later-stage investor event. Two people came to my speciality coffee room, one became my first investor and the other sponsored another angel forum. I went to this angel forum which is where I met my 2nd angel investor.
Everyone along the way has been thanked, and thanked, and thanked as many times as possible. This requires no extra money other than time.
Next form of bootstrapping is going to as many events as possible and flying in-and-out in the most inconvenient times possible, but never staying the extra day since you can easily spend an extra $500 to $750 on the extra day. Going to events includes participating as a panelist, pitching or just working the audience.
Another form of bootstrapping is to comment and respond to as many professional fund raising news stories and blogs as possible.
A final form of bootstrapping is to maintain an ongoing list of potential investors and to update them everytime a major milestone is achieved. This is a subset of the information provided to existing investors, whom by the way will usually invest more than once if they are treated as a partner- not just an investor.
Each of these requires persistence and professionalism. There are numerous tricks-of-the-trade that can be learned, but have to be embraced and accepted as part of the ongoing process to be successful at raising capital and growing a company.
Brian Javeline
President & CEO
www.MyOnlineToolbox.com
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So I was invited to the DFJGotham.com dinner tonight. DFJ is a great VC firm with some of the nicest people I know running it (not just nicest investors). Genuinely good people. Besides for the good food and wine and getting to catch up with friends and hobnobbing with some of the great people of our little community, Danny the cofounder (and a fellow Yeshivah of Flatbush grad) went out of his way to talk about TakesAllTypes.org (TAT) my non profit with Ben Bergman. It’s really gratifying (and awesome) to see someone take time out of their speech at a capitalist affair to talk about a non profit cause (and even better when it’s mine). I wanted to thank Danny and the team at DFJ (Ross, Jed, Thatcher, Mark, Peter etc…) for the mention and the invite. I had a great time and I highly recommend DFJ. Also congrats to Thatcher & Mark on your promotions.PS. I was not paid for this post. Go IZEA!
So I was at a panel event that Howard did for NYSIA tonight and I was thinking…do we have any real power brokers in nyc tech? This of course led me to think of the Alley Insider list and also the Peoples’ Choice list which I proudly can say - I came in 5th. My answer is a big fat resounding NO. I don’t think there are any real power brokers in NYC tech - potentially one. So let’s look at what defines a power broker: according to American Heritage Dictionary,
power broker or pow·er·brok·er (pou’ər-brō’kər)
n. A person who exerts strong political or economic influence, especially by virtue of the individuals and votes he or she controls. Then also we have to look at the Seminole Tome “Power Broker” about the life of Robert Moses. Robert Moses if you don’t know controlled and built NYC, he manipulated every mayor and governor for decades and is responsible for most of the bridges and roads in NY. He controlled power. So who controls the power in NYC tech? Is it the entrepreneurs? For the most part no - one mention of the word financing by someone and they usually become sheep.Is it the serial entrepreneurs? Nope. There’s not enough of them and most are too focused on their own startup to exert influence. Is it the investors? Not really, there’s really only one investor NYC that really has the reach and consumer influence and that’s Fred Wilson of course - but he’s one VC and is doing deals for his own firm. David Rose potentially with NY Angels and Angel Soft. Is it the connectors and event hosts? While I’m friends with most of them and am one myself, I don’t think any of us really wield a stick - though we do control a lot of information or deal flow in investor speak, it’s not in a way to really “CONTROL” the market. Is it the tech analyst’s and bankers like the first time around? Not really. Who can actually name an ibank analyst these days? Which ibankers are known as tech/dot commers? not really anyone in NYC.In theory Scott Hieferman could be one, but he really doesn’t exert his influence beyond his meetup (he could if he chose too). Kevin Ryan is probably the closest thing to it as he has the track record, basically invented the industry that underpins web2 and runs a news service but still we are left with only a handful of people and out of them no one that really controls the underpinnings of our tech society. We have influencers not power brokers. So is there a problem with that? NO! That means anyone can get something done 
This is why you’re friend whose company just sold for $50MM to Cisco is asking you for a loan.
The average company takes 5 years concept to exit.
The average company has 3 founders.
By the time a company gets past its Series C round, the average founders group has a total of 15% of the stock or 5% per founder.
The company sells for $50MM.
The founder has never taken a penny out besides his $100,000 salary. Meanwhile he gave up a $250,000 a year cushy job to start the company.
The founders take is only $2.5MM.
After Capital Gains Tax say he has $1.9MM left.
Now let’s take out $700,000 for paying off the mortgage he couldn’t afford. He’s left with $1.2MM. Still not bad.
Now let’s pay off the Ferrari and the Wifes S500. Down to a cool million.
Now let’s put $200k in the kids college fund: $800,000
Now he probably owes a lot of favors - so lets write off $250,000 in bad investments (I’m being generous) $550,000.
Now there’s vacations and spending: Down to $450,000
Now he’s bored and has ADD. None of his initial ideas will be successful because their done for the wrong reasons. Now we’re down to $200,000
Now he pays off his student loans (finally - the Ferrari of course was more important before), down to $100,000
$100,000 = that is all your friend the dot com millionaire has in the bank for 5 years of work.
You make $250,000. Sock away $100,000. You know tech and have the time to invest, you earn 25% a year, You sock away $125,000 - in 5 years you’ve put away $600,000, paid off your house and cars, worked half as many hours and had 1/1000 the stress of your friend the founder.
Whose worth more? You are and you’re at the same cushy job he walked away from 5 years ago.
This is why serial entrepreneurs never have enough cash. They’ve been nickeled and dime’d to death.
The only people that cash in are people that have taken companies public or people that have been smart enough to sell shit for gold (Mark Cuban, Geocities guys, linkexchange guy etc….)
But i leave with one final question: Whose happier? The nearly broke founder or you, who has 5X as much cash in the bank as the founder?
The Founder because he loves it and is living the dream.
If you are in the start-up world, I’d bet you’ve heard that you’re fair share of times. VC’s hear it all the time, execs hear other execs wine about it all the time and I’ve even been guilty of it. I mean c’mon, everyones had at least one cash crunch in their life, usually more than one.
What does it mean? — That it’s time to be creative. As soon as you utter those magical words, that should be a wake up call to stand erect and get to work because it’s time to bootstrap. Don’t wine, win! If you think you need a million dollar, earn it, go out and sell more widgets. Take a second job as a mortgage broker and convince all your friends in the valley that it’s time to cash in on their million dollar mansions. Whatever you do, don’t just sit around and wine and hopefully to find an investor cause unless you’re in the been there done that crowd, don’t bet on it. Bootstrap on it.
So I’ve been pitch on a pile of “new” incubator type models for building companies lately. This led me to think through the venture process and my conclusion, though i may very well be wrong and I just thought of this so it’s not fully fleshed out, but i think that the general structure of venture funds today is wrong - at least for web tech. I mean the costs of building these companies are very low and the values to get from selling them are pretty low so I think it needs a new approach.
Yes, people are doing this now but it should be formalized.
I think the following are the stages of a company life cycle:
1) Choose the flower (plan the idea) = Limited to no cash required
2) Plant the seeds (get a product launched) = under 50k
3) Water The Plants (supporting cash for marketing, tweaking, 1 full time employee)
4) Sprouting (founders come on board full time and it takes the shape of a real company) = 250-750k
5) Flowers Grow (growth phase) = 500k - 2MM
6) Bloom (combination of Series A/B/C leading to an exit) = $X
There really isn’t a need for Series A, B & C anymore. Yes you can do it but there isn’t a need. The Bloom phase is essentially when you build a real sales force and get bit with the giant hosting bill but what more do you really need cash for in most internet plays today? Not much.
If I was starting a fund I would be in one of two places
1) Incubation Phase: Help people build a business model and get live. Up to 50k investments.
2) Development Phase: 50-500k - building the official team = you are a company now
3) Secondary Financing: 500k+ = most money goes to marketing and strategic deals
That’s my new 3 phases of VC.
Curious what everyone thinks…
Now most entrepreneurs don’t understand how to negotiate with investors. In fact unless they have had a previous success or can create a ton of venture competition, the entrepreneur should NEVER be negotiating a term sheet. There’s a simple reason why: professional investors are masters of structured finance. Structured finance implies structure. Entrepreneurs are unstructured people. Investors tend to have “standard” structures or term sheets. These structures in reality can often be negotiated - however they should never be negotiated by the entrepreneur because the entrepreneur will come off greedy and like an ass because they (we) don’t understand the structural details. This is where your lawyer comes in. No, I’m not talking about your roomates friends brother in law as a lawyer. If he’s your lawyer, unless he works at a venture related firm such as Wilson Sonsini, Fulbright etc… then you’re an idiot. A serious law firm is appreciated by venture capitalists and can get away with hard ball negotiation tactics. Your roomates friends brother in law may kill the deal trying the same tactics. You as the entrepreneur will likely shoot yourself in the foot even for trying to do it yourself because by default you don’t understand structure. If you did, you’d be an investor and not an entrepreneur. So go spend the $20,000 and get yourself a serious law firm or if your idea is really good, get the lawyer to take some equity instead of cash and then you really have a shark on your side.
There a number of ways to finance ventures. Here is my quick and dirty analysis of each funding mechanism.
Self Funded - you are in control and own it but unless you are discplined and have experience, entrepreneurs tend to lose their head in the clouds. This is great if you are an expert and experienced already - if not get to the point where you can sustain professional help fast - or you too will need professional help.
Partners - Partners are great as they can counter each other but two partners with no experience does not equal one with experience. Partners where one is at a higher level or more dedicated is bad. Most partnerships break up. They are only good with two experienced people on the same level.
Dumb Money Angel: This is the guy that runs the carwash. This is great if you know what you are doing. If you too are clueless - besides for being lucky at finding financing - you are going to waste his money. So the question is if you have a conscience or not? Many a fund managers can’t sleep when they lose OPM.
Smart Money Angels: This is generally the best way to start a company, esp. if smart money is from the industry you are targeting. Usually you’ll get a fair valuation and validation on your concept and expert help achieving your goals and be able to leverage their network. It’s a win-win all around.
Tier 1 VC: This is good if you need a LOT of cash and is second best to smart money angels. Names like Softbank, Seq, DFJ etc… are great. These leads will take a lot of equity, rip you to shreds on due diligence but be fair and add value. If you can get them to invest that means something.
Tier 3 VC / Vulture Capital: Tier 2/3 VC = people playing VC’s that aren’t in it for building real value. Vulture Capital is selfish money that screws entrepreneurs (short term approach since our industry is small and word gets around). If you take on this capital, have a great friggin lawyer and make sure you are protected. Always ask for references of successful exits and failures from your investor and see what happened. Do your research. These guys will take 95% of your company if you are not careful.
Debt Financing: Take it if you can get it. It can be free. Mortgaging your house is self financing and not debt financing. Debt is actual real debt. Debt can kill a company as fast as it can help though so watch your ass. Sometimes you can get a mix of debt & equity. If you are careful this is great - if you are not careful you will give away your whole company. Why? Equity/Debt hybrids usually have a convertible clause where if you don’t pay it back in X debt converts to equity - you lose control and your equity is worthless. Then again if you can’t pay it back - your equity probably is worthless anyway.
Reverse Merger Financing: This can great (access to debt, liquidity, stock to acquire companies and incentivize employees) or horrible (work with shady people who stick you with nasty convertible debt and consulting fees and then convert the debt into equity, take control and kick you out. This is shady finance though can be extremely productive if you are careful - or it will destroy your business and make mortal enemies of the people pulling the strings.
As for me - I’m a serial entrepreneur, run BootStrapper.com, have self funded a couple ventures, taken on partners and broken up hard, run a seed capital group and am involved in some interesting ventures now.
Networking today is flawed.
Most events are flawed.
Most events are boring.
Most events are a waste of time.
Why?
Take for example an investor panel. You have 4 investors on a panel and 40 entrepreneurs in the audience. The panel lasts 2 hours, followed by Q&A, followed by every entrepreneur going over to every investor shaking his or her hand and asking for money. The investor usually says “sounds interesting” or “no” or “ok”, no real feedback is provided in those 20 second and often times the investors feels / looks annoyed being approached.
Let me go further.
The entrepreneur doesn’t give a shit what the panel has to say. He really doesn’t. He doesn’t want to hear about how you turned a $2MM investment into $100MM. He doesn’t want to hear how you fucked up investing in pets.com. (except maybe because then he may think you’re dumb enough to invest in his bad idea)
The entrepreneur wants to find out 3 things:
1) How can i get the investors attention?
2) How can i get a meeting with the investor?
3) How can I get the investors money?
Does the panel serve any of these purposes? No.
Now let’s look at what the investor wants…
1) Network with his peers
2) occassionally meet a smart entrepreneur to invest in
What he doesn’t want it a hoard of gold diggers looking for cash.
The standard panel networking format does not help anyone. It is a waste of time - though you can still meet people and I still go to them - i just disagree with them.
A VC friend of mine always says “Always appeal to the lowest common denominator” no one cares how fancy your tech is if its too complicated for them to use it.
So what’s the solution?
Now this is a shameless plug for my own investor networking events - however I DARE you to find anyone who has gone to one of them that doesn’t love it.
Have a quick speaker or two make a simple speech on a specific topic. Limit it to 5 minutes per speaker, 1-3 speakers max. Followed by Q&A. Cut out the panel discussion no one cares about.
Then let anyone get up and give their elevator pitch to the group for FEEDBACK. PROACTIVE feedback. Let anyone there chime in with advice, questions, comments etc…max of 5 minutes per person total. Then after, if any investor is interested he can approach the person who had the idea separately after.
This way the entrepreneur gets real and quality feedback and the potential to interest investors WITHOUT pitching them directly.
This also does another thing. It allows people to build relationships. Maybe the idea is bad but because it wasn’t a straight shoot down, real advice can be given and accepted without hard feelings. Nothing kills a conversation quicker between an entrepreneur and a VC than the words “i’ll pass”.
This way the open forum serves to quality people for one another and provide real feedback and advice. it also is stress free and pitch free networking and involves no bullshit hobnobbing.
just my 2 cents…
Most people looking for funding want to go the MD of a VC fund. They want to track down the big fish. They will go to a panel discussion and go after the guys on the panel and try to shake their hand, pass off a card and beg for money. However, I beg to differ.
I would like to offer a different approach.
Meet the Associates in the crowd, the people that work for the guys and gals on stage.
Here’s why: They are the gatekeepers.
Who do you think reads your pitches and plans first?
Also, who do you think is hungrier?
Should the fund fail, there’s a good chance, the MD has X millions in the bank and associate has far less. Who is more motivated for success.
Let me go further. The MD already has proven himself (or at least convinced instititutional investors he’s a big swinging dick), the Associate is trying to impress the MD and bring in deals to prove his or her worth.
Often times, the Associate may be just as much in awe and want to impress the MD as you are.
So would you rather have an Associate that is in your corner, believing in your deal and pressing his or her bosses to fund it or be another spec on the radar for the MD, and possibly even an annoyance to talk to?
Influence the influencers, make friends with the gatekeepers and doors will open. Even if you know the king, that doesn’t mean you can get a meeting without first going through his consigliere.
Think about it …
If you are pre-revenue, what are you really selling?
Potential ROI? No.
Potential Revenue? No.
Your idea? Maybe
You? YES
The single most important thing trying to raise napkin money is you. What is your background, why will you be successful. Why are you the guy to take THIS idea to the promised land. Do you have relevant domain experience or a successful exit? If the answer is no, it will be pretty dam hard to raise capital….unless…
You have a demo or IP and are willing to replace yourself as CEO….
In general the TEAM is most important
Second is the idea, as part of the idea is the size of the potential market
Third is the IP
Fourth - how you found the investor
Those 4 things together will determine if you get capital. If you don’t have good answers, you probably won’t raise a cent…
