Use Other People’s Money To Launch Your Startup

I’ve been up since maybe 530.

I went for my morning wander and read a couple of?blinkists.?Some cool takeaways?from the summaries I read/finished this morning:

1. Supercorp?— You can be a profitable company that also gives back — or rather becomes profitable and helps humanity all at the same time
2. Be Fearless?— is about focussing on consistent failure and if your ideas always succeed than you’re not taking risks enough (this kind of makes me think about Pearl Lemon and the mixture of risk and safety I have altogether)
3. Startup Seed Funding for The Rest of Us?— about avoiding mirror hiring and having a founding team who have similar skill sets such as yourself…and how bad that is.

Amongst the other short books I’ve read just before that –

The Entrepreneurial Bible to Venture Capital and Resilient were interesting?— more raising money books!

I think one of the things I’d like to do (having read these blinks) is raise money at some point.

I’ve not really done it before. I mean I have raised money — ￡5,000 from my uncle, found partners and been given 9-months+ of development resources from an investment company…

But I’ve not raised ￡100k+ from people I don’t know — that would be interesting.

I got interested in the idea when meeting an investor via Lunchclub and he walked me through the idea of using other people’s money to grow a startup.

The idea fascinated me as I currently need to transition out of my partnership for Plant Sumo and strike out on my own…so why not do it with other people’s money?

This idea is appealing to me because well….the concept makes tons of sense.

I enjoy risk. I have certain access to resources via my agency that I can deploy across the board.

I hire talented people regularly out of India, Egypt and the Philippines…and have a placement programme that identifies talent quickly…

So I have labour power and full-time expertise as well with my SEO and Content team…

Leveraging all of this together — especially if I can raise some cash as well means the risks will almost fall to nothing.

I think part of me wants to understand more of the pitching process in general as well to see what it’s like and to see whether I can do it.

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A couple of things I took from my good friend Zuka about what’s important:

• Investors invest in proven ideas
• You need either users or sales to get any level of decent investment
• You need a clear plan and vision
• Bringing some of your own capital to the table is also important/very helpful
• Decide on the kind of investor you want. Someone with cash/no involvement OR cash/industry experience OR cash/heavy reporting required (to give you a kick up the backside?)

It’s great to have Zuka as a friend to ask about these things. I think he’s raised maybe $500k or more over the years so he knows what he’s talking about (we hope lol).

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On a side note — talking about investment’s — today’s blog is something of an investment.

I had a conversation with my writing coach Chris and it’s become clear that I need to get ‘back on the wagon’ when it comes to writing.

One of the things that have slowed me down is focussing upon keyword research and having things on my mind when it comes to Pearl Lemon and having to solve problems.

(I’ve just decided I’m going to write about this in a separate blog immediately. I’ll perhaps write a separate blog as well about?‘The 20-Minute Investment Approach’.

Cool. Back to writing about raising money.

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Some other things that seem important to me when it comes to raising money:

• You need to have a strong founding team OR prove very clearly you can support things all by yourself
• Having some background of success will help a bunch
• You can cold call/cold email a bunch of investors ONCE you have a compelling proposition
• Having read Be Fearless — I shouldn’t overthink it — I should just do it (so maybe just write up a topline idea and run email outreach anyway)

Final Thoughts On Using Other People’s Money To Launch Your Startup

For me, it’ll help give me a kick up the backside with pushing certain projects forward — i.e Plant Sumo.

But in general — from what I’ve read — it seems pretty straightforward to prepare. And I think there are two things that scupper people early perhaps –

Take your idea as FAR forward as you can WITHOUT investors involved and WITHOUT costing yourself too much time and THEN raise money.

The rule of thumb (I guess) is —?the better shape your idea/business is in — the better deal you will get.

F*ck it just do it — you never know it might be fun!