Fund Raising
Don't assume a socially conscious angel will be a soft touch. To win their money, you've got to get a lot of things right.
Angel investors bridge the gap between the money you have and the money you need to grow your business. Angels provided $8.9 billion for 26,300 entrepreneurs in the first half of 2011, according to the Center for Venture Research. That’s a nice pot of money, and by all indications, it’s even larger now.
Still, getting your share of it into your social enterprise is no small feat. Most pitches to angels fail.
The Angel
CoFund last week announced
the completion of its first five investments, with a total of £7.2 million
committed to UK SMEs.
One of the five businesses is female founded.
Business and Enterprise Minister Mark Prisk joined some of the first businesses to receive funding, following the end of a strong first quarter for the Angel CoFund, which was launched in November 2011.
This week cosmetics giant L'Oreal entered the women in tech arena with The Next Lab and also The Next Generation Awards. The Next Lab: Women in Digital - CEO's and founders, can apply for L'Oréal's New Experimental Testing Fund if they are building a venture that's NEXT in digital innovation. Grants range from $10,000 till $100,000.
What is The NEXT Lab?
The Astia Series on Entrepreneurs is a new series on high-growth entrepreneurial teams brought to you by The NextWomen. The entrepreneurs are all part of Astia, the global venture-accelerator and network for women-led companies and have all terrific stories on how they are conquering their space. The Astia Series on Entrepreneurs is supported by Astia's sponsors.
I have the good fortune of living in Boulder, CO home of TechStars. For those not
familiar with it, Techstars is the largest US accelerator focusing on
technology companies. They fund an average of 50 companies per year. Each selected company receives $100K of seed money in exchange of equity.
The TechStars model has been replicated in several other cities in the U.S. In addition, they just launched a Global Accelerator Network.
How easy is it to get in with TechStars? Well, 1% of the applicants are funded. The accelerator receives an average of 4,000 applications per year. The good news is that TechStars co-founder David Cohen has recently set up a $28M fund. 50% of this capital will be devoted to fund companies that go through the TechStars program.
I had the great opportunity
to pitch Empower Lounge at SXSW for Startup America Women's The Dolphin Tank. What did I learn
with only 2-minutes to pitch the panel of judges who happen to be ALL women, a
rare opportunity for a female founder? Less is more. More is better.
Less is more about the
"why" behind your product. I spent most of the 2-minutes sharing
research and what I learned first-hand about what smart women really crave from
the digital world to build the case for the pain Empower Lounge was solving.
Yes, this is story is important but so hard to squeeze in a short amount of time
so the details ended up creating more confusion than clarity. Next time I would
save the inspiration behind the idea for the second date.
For
some entrepreneurial ventures, startup capital needs are minimal. If an
entrepreneur has a low risk profile (and an idea that doesn’t require a
lot of startup capital), this could be the way to go.
For other ventures, startup capital requirements are more involved. While there are entrepreneurs who are able to finance their startups themselves - either from savings and investments or by continuing to work at least part time - most of us need to investigate other sources of financing.
In addition to all the standard options that entrepreneurs have relied on for decades - loans, credit card financing, money from family and friends - here are some other ways that you can secure the funds you need:
Australian entrepreneur Nikki Durkin has re-launched
99dresses.com at the YCombinator Winter 2012 Demo Day.
Tech pundits Robert Scoble and Ben Parr (former editor at Mashable) have already named 99Dresses their favourite company to come out of YCombinator's Winter 2012 program.
As the fabulous The NextWomen DWEN Interview Series draws near its close, we'll be bringing you some of our favourite gems of wisdom from the series, focusing on certain key subjects. This week's hot topic is: raising capital.
Video interview with Levo League Founders, Caroline Ghosn & Amanda Pouchot. Levo League is a technology startup dedicated to accelerating career development of young professional women. They have raised $1.25m in their initial round of fundind and launched this week, as we reported yesterday.
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