The most common way to raise capital is to ask your close circle of people for the money you need. That in the investors’ jargon is called the three F’s, Family, Friends and Fools, that would be the family, friends and fools willing to bet on you and open the options to get start-up capital
Raising capital can take months
Usually when you want to raise capital you have to knock on many doors before one opens, in fact the times that I have had to do it sometimes I have been able to spend more than two months looking for options to raise capital, I remember a good friend and colleague years ago told me how he got the first investment group that put capital in his company, it was one of the first advertising in Spain, and explained how it took more than a year to get the necessary capital to relaunch his company
The reality is that if you are really going to look for it, one of the team members often has to dedicate a lot of time to locating those investors who might be interested in your business
Raising capital means having very clear ideas
The most important thing to get capital is to have very clear ideas, so what you have to do is to work on a Business Plan or Business Plan that also allows you to grow the information of it as your search begins, and why I say grow the information of it, because like any other business path that you start if you give you receive, and in the case of the search for investment to receive you have to give something important: MAXIMUM RESPECT FOR THE TIME of the investor
If there is something that an investor values above ideas and money, that is TIME. And to get capital you have to know how to play your trump cards, it may be that the investors to whom you want to propose the investment in your business are not the right ones, they are not interested in your business or it is simply not the right time for them, but if you act with respect and go to the point, knowing how to explain your business and making them see that their time is very important to you, you can get a huge snowball of capital
Raise capital by making a capital snowball?
Yes, you can. If to get capital you show that you know your business very well and that you have an important respect for the investor’s time, even if he is not interested in your project, it is possible that he may be interested in you and your team indirectly, investors know how to weave networks in which they often co-invest, and in that case he is not your target investor, but he can be a gateway to other investors who can be
When an investor sees that the team is good, that you know the business well and that his time is important to you, he will understand perfectly that the time of any partner or contact is also important to you, and often the best investment opportunities arise because an investor detects an opportunity and shares it with others who may be at a more appropriate time to invest in your business, who may be more interested or who are more suitable
And I assure you that if something is done from the investment point of view is to know what they want to invest in each other and have them identified, often between investors to get a good opportunity can mean at least owe favors
and to get capital where can you have access to investors?
Well at this stage I will tell you that normally in almost all countries there are usually unions of Business Angels to raise capital that even specialize in sectors or activities
But if you want to join one of the most powerful networks of investors and entrepreneurs that I know to get capital and in which I personally have achieved important things both in terms of contacts and business have been these two
Go Funding: It is a community to raise capital that tries to cover all the necessary options for an investment, either from the point of view of capital for entrepreneurs as investment opportunities for investors and also have an interesting area of experts and a bank of business ideas, partners, validation of business models, etc.
Startups.co: For me this is one of the best communities in the market to raise capital, I know it since it was called GoBigNetwork.com, but they left this domain and less than a month ago they are called Startups.co, the volume of investors, the segmentation of both investment volumes and business are very well achieved, and I know that for some projects in the region and in Europe have been achieved seed investment and expansion
To get capital In the case of Spain, I have seen a post by Carlos Blanco in which he makes a good exposition of the options that exist, the great difference that exists of investors between countries to get capital is the differences of exit options and the volume of the markets, incentives that many countries implement so that the entrepreneurs can get capital, etc. I would say that Spain is one of the most complicated, but I think this post is very well oriented: Spanish Business Angels