Funding Analytics--How it helps you raise funding

Fund raising is moving from a local exercise to a global one.  One can still get a loan from a local bank or an equity investment from a local angel group, but the availability of capital throughout the world awaits those who know where to find it.

Investment Analytics shows investors how to make better investment decisions.  Funding Analytics shows entrepreneurs how to find better investors.  By researching the track record and criteria of venture capital funds, private equity funds, and angel group portfolios, the entrepreneur can more accurately target the right investor group for their deal.

Funding Analytics includes the current market rate for valuations -- always a key decision in a negotiation with investors.

Funding Analytics shows the best way to approach the investor and keep them informed of your progress.

Funding Analytics shows which investors have funds ready to deploy versus those who are still raising their next fund.

Funding Analytics shows what due diligence documents are required and how to build them.

Total capital investment throughout the world is over $100 Trillion. The funding is there -- to find it you'll need Funding Analytics.

Five Universal Principles for Startups

Startups are great.  They provide new careers.  They constitute new jobs.  They are the path to the next generation but it's not for the fainthearted.  There are five universal principles in the world of startups:

1. It always takes longer than you think -- this goes for building the product, closing the sale, and growing the market. 

2. It costs more than you thought -- most entrepreneurs are off by a factor of 10 when it comes to estimating time to complete the software, the work required to raise funding, and the effort needed to close the sale.

3. There's always a better idea -- no matter how great your idea is there's always a better -- it's called progress.

4. The journey is the reward -- in retrospect building the company is best part of having a company.

5.The team is what you will remember -- products come and go, markets go up and down, but the team and the relationships you build will stay with you in the long run. 

5 Things Investors Love to hear in a Pitch

Investors hear pitches continually throughout the year.  There are so many that one's eyes can glaze over.  From time to time, an entrepreneur will make a pitch and the investor's eyes light up.  It's because investors are listening for a few key things that show you have a real business with real growth.  The rest is filler.  Every entrepreneur has a story--many are interesting, some are not.  But for investing purposes there has to be 5 key elements to capture their interest.  Here they are:

1. Real traction--entrepreneurs who have sales and show it are head and shoulders above the rest.  Most talk about the traction they will have in the FUTURE but not what they have today.  In an investors mind, this equates to "No Traction".

2. Real pain point--the entrepreneur has found a real pain point in the market and is filling it.  Someone once said, customers pay for pain to go away -- they don't pay for nuisances or inconveniences.

3. Real team -- they have someone building it and someone selling it and those team members know what they are doing.

4. Real product -- the product works and is non-trivial to build. It's more than just spin marketing.

5. Real growth prospects -- the market opportunity has strong growth potential and is not going to run out of steam in a year or two.

Those are the elements that light up the investor room if you really have it.