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You know how the rest of that sage advice goes. Dreamers can only take an entrepreneurial venture so far, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t vital. However, dreamers need to be balanced with doers.

It’s the doers who get the funding – and without funding, you don’t have a business. In this video by StartupGrind, founders and investors talk about what actually gets a check written.

George Zachary of Charles River Ventures says he’s just recently figured it out after 17 years of being a venture capitalist: “Almost all the investments I wrote a check into, I had to have the feeling, ‘Would I be a co-founder of this company?’” In other words, are you barking up the right tree with investors?

This doesn’t mean a venture Zachary passed on wasn’t g...

This interview, conducted by Emily Pope, was originally published on the General Assembly blog.

Raffi Khatchadourian is a Mathematical Economics major and incoming junior at Colgate University. A self-starter and talented entrepreneur, Raffi has established himself as the COO of indify, an emerging music startup, before many of his peers have even declared their major. Back in January, Raffi attended GA’s week-long Business Accelerator program in partnership with Colgate University. Since then, he and his co-founders have gone on to win $10,000 in funding from Colgate University’s Entrepreneur Weekend Shark Tank and $15,000 from Colgate University’s Entrepreneurs Fund. Read on to learn how this young entrepreneur transformed his passion fo...

At Startups.com we talk to thousands of founders, many of whom are weighing the benefits of convertible debt versus equity. If you’re not sure what convertible debt is, check out these posts:

• Convertible Debt Simplified

• Convertible Debt Basics

Since equity and convertible debt are the most common methods for raising early stage startup funding, it makes sense to examine them side by side so that you can understand the differences. Hopefully this will make your decision easier, so you can move on to the real fun of actually raising the money.

In order to get a handle on the decision we’re going to do three things:

1. Compare convertible debt and equity
2. Discuss how investors think about convertible debt
3. Evaluate the pitfalls of using conv...

I talk to hundreds of entrepreneurs every year. It’s a privilege that provides me with extraordinary perspective on how ideas are making it to market. One of the consistent themes in startups struggling to make it out of the idea/concept phase is that they can’t get out of their own way.

While the stereotypical inventor is purported to be secretive, distrustful and reclusive, many of these behaviors—intentional or incidental—can now be observed in startup founders of all stripes. Because of the ease with which you can now reach vast audiences, doing nothing to promote or expose your idea can now be interpreted as an act of secrecy. You owe it to your idea to expose it to a potential market to determine viability.

Your idea might be great, o...

Active investors sift through dozens of deals a week, and some hundreds a month. In order to find the gold, they need to quickly weed out the junk. The junk usually involves startups with any one of three red flags that deems the deal a “pass.”

Unfortunately startup founders are rarely aware of these flags, or choose to ignore them. Regardless of whether you believe these flags apply to your startup or not, you can be sure that investors will be far more critical of your progress and your deal traction.

No Traction

Traction is your ability to demonstrate you can move the ball forward, with or without funding. Traction comes from signing up early customers, generating some revenue, or demonstrating high user growth.

Startups often complain t...

Funding doesn't make a lot of sense to first time Founders. In our minds, we think, "Hey, investors want to make money, so if my startup can make money, who cares how big it gets?"

Unfortunately, that thinking overlooks one big fact: that for every one investor check out there, there are hundreds of startups competing for it.

In order to understand how investors look at one deal versus another, we first have to understand how investors look at deals in the first place.

Investors Need Big Returns

There's no absolute rule here, but investor behavior generally follows a consistent trend. Most "professional" investors (people who invest consistently) gravitate toward investments that can yield an exponential return, such as an IPO.

The think...

Just a couple of weeks ago, I closed my first ever investment in a private Silicon Valley startup. I didn’t go through the standard procedures though: while I did conduct my due diligence, I did not get pitched face-to-face in a nice conference room, negotiate deal terms, or seal the deal with a firm handshake.

Instead, like many other educated folks who are excited about startups but don’t quite have the wealth to be accredited investors, I invested through a crowdfunding campaign.

There’s a storm of hype building around this new equity crowdfunding model, which allows middle and even working-class people to invest in a startup by the tens or even hundreds of thousands, without many of the onerous regulatory and accounting issues that so ...

Our "How it Works" slide is where we begin explaining the mechanics of our solution in a pitch deck presentation. It's notably different than the Solution Slide of a pitch deck which sometimes confuses startup founders. We'll explain how the best pitch decks walk venture capitalists and angel investors step-by-step through their products.

How Potential Investors view the How it Works Slide

When raising money from potential investors, a successful pitch deck focuses on the needs of the audience first (read: investors). Every word in our pitch deck should be tailored to the 2 unique selling point goals they have.

Investor: "Do I understand how it works?"

In our solution slide, we explained what the product does. Now we have to begin convincing in...

In the early years of your startup, you may feel like a one-person show. You have infinite faith in your product or service, but how do you translate that commitment to investors and stakeholders? How can you raise brand awareness before you have the funding necessary for marketing and PR?

Despite these obstacles, you must find a way to gain traction in building a community or generating sales. Otherwise, you risk stalling or, worse, folding. Fortunately, this is where “strength in numbers” comes into play. Find out how you can get your show on the road with a strategic startup partnership.

Getting ahead with a strategic startup partnership

1. Instant Street Cred

Validation by large enterprises generates the credibility and exposure you ne...

Continuing in Phase Four of a four-part Funding Series:

Phase One - Structuring a Fundraise

Phase Two - Investor Selection

Phase Three - The Pitch

Phase Four - Investor Outreach

• Part 1 - Investor Outreach

• Part 2 - Investor Introductions: How to Get Them

• Part 3 - The Investor Email Pitch ( ←YOU ARE HERE 😀)

• Part 4 - How to Contact Investors

Let’s dive in!

Nearly all potential investors require a solid email pitch before they are willing to take a meeting with a startup. A great Email Pitch won't guarantee you a meeting, but a bad one will definitely prevent one! Therefore, creating the perfect Email Pitch is essential if you want an investor to respond.

The perfect Email Pitch is very tight — just a few very well-crafted sentences to create a great fi...