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What are good ways for personal fund raising?

What are the most time-efficient ways of networking and fund-raising for a start-up?

  • Happy greetings everyone! We're a new tech startup based in New Delhi, India. We are a kick-ass team of 10 people (3 co-founders) and we realize that we'll be needing funds to do what we exactly want to do. But, the main point that arises here is - TIME. I, along with the other two co-founders, are SO tied up all through the day (from 10 in the morning to way past midnight) with operations, business development, strategic alliances, accounting, planning, etcetera etcetera that we find time to be inadequate even to handle the core business activities. Now, to spring up 'Investment Raising' activities in between, is a huge ask, or so we think. Innumerable hours on eMails, Quora, VcCircle, MediaNama, TechCircle, YourStory, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, NextBigWhat, and what not. All this, when we already run packed schedules, jostling around to complete daily core business activities. We're a very young start-up (average age 24) and none of us has any experience with raising funds or dealing with Venture Capitalists.  I wish to know the following things. 1. How to approach SO many people (whom we don't know directly) and SO many funds, without asking a co-founder to work full-time on this? Without having to spend innumerable hours on PowerPoint presentations or on Quora or LinkedIn or Facebook or Twitter trying to approach them? 2. Are their any professional agencies/freelancers which have contacts in all the PE/VC firms and they do the initial introduction/presentation process and setup meetings with interested/prospective investors? Look forward to knowing your kind insights.

  • Answer:

    There is no short cut to raising funding. Founders will have to be involved. Investors invest primarily because they like the team... not because its a good idea or a good business plan. You will get some pointers on this on my blog http://thehubforstartups.wordpress.com/ Work on a good plan. Network. Connect to investors (groups like Indian Angel Network, where I am the VP, are excellent platforms for you to connect with over 250 investors).

Prajakt Raut at Quora Visit the source

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Glad to see you sound so excited about your startup - critical quality.  As far as fund raising in India, to sum it up you need to show traction - angels, VCs lap it up.  Little else matters.  So, even if you're building a great product, but have no traction yet, highly unlikely you will get funded.  This could also be because they see so many deals, they don't have the time to think through whether a particular product will make it big.  If you show traction, everything else will fall in place.  The questions is how do you survive the period where you build the product and then gain traction (which can take months).

Anonymous

Send a well worded and brief email to VCs describing the product, team and traction. You will hear a response if they're interested. Another way is to reach out to IAN, Mumbai Angels. Don't waste your time with media companies or events or meetups.

Anonymous

This seems like an old question, but continues to be very relevant to most startups today in India.There is an online platform - LetsVenture that eases the discovery and connect challenges for startups. You could create your startup profile at http://www.letsventure.com and connect to investors who are looking to invest in seed/early stage companies. The platform is a curated market place for investors and startups. We also help startups with reviewing their investor deck, and other details before we list you under Active fund raising on the platform. It makes the process of being discovered by investors and fund raise easier - with the assumption that you are following the business basics of building a company.

Shanti Mohan

I know 2 ways for networking 1) Startup saturdays by Headstart. 2) Rodinhood meetups.

Rohit Dsouza

Hope you have been able to secure funding for your startup !! If you're building your startup with an intention to get funded from Angels it should have few criterias - Team with proven credentials - Business model clarity - Traction If you're building your startup with an intention to get funded from VC's it should have few criterias - Scalability - Visibility on Exit If you are doing your hard work with building the Startup in the right way, http://first100sales.com can partner with you as your Goto market partner for your funding & other needs

Rajiv Mukherjee

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