When you’re looking for grants to start a business, you’re looking in an area that’s crowded with a lot of competition. But, if there’s one thing startup entrepreneurs are known for, it’s tenacity.

The reason there’s so much competition is, a) there are a limited number of grants and, b) grants — unlike other forms of funding — don’t have to be paid back. You also don’t have to give up any equity in your company in order to win one. Sounds appealing, doesn’t it?

So while we don’t always recommend grants as the first place startups go looking for funding, they’re absolutely a great option for a certain subset of companies. Here’s an overview of how to secure grants to start to business, as well as a few types of grants for starting a busines...

Planning to raise some capital for your startup? Well, before announcing your intentions to the world, take a step back and remember that investors are a notoriously skittish bunch. According to a Fundable study, venture capital and angel investors pour money into less than 1 percent of new enterprises, meaning it may be best to raise money away from the public eye.

A more low-key business fundraising approach isn’t as tough as it sounds, as most entrepreneurs unknowingly do it to some extent. If you’ve read about a startup that’s “killing” or “crushing” its fundraising goals, that’s usually a calculated effort to build the kind of buzz that entices on-the-fence investors to take the plunge before it’s too late.

To combat potential investo...

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 ( ←YOU ARE HERE 😀)

• Part 3 - The Investor Email Pitch

• Part 4 - How to Contact Investors

Let’s dive in!

Before you try to connect angel investors or venture capitalists to secure funding, we want to ensure you are using the best possible inroad. That means before contacting a potential investor, we want to find the best way to make a warm introduction.

Startups sometimes forget that an angel investor or really any private investors are just regular people like us.

Their investment process starts with fam...

It was one of the first gut-check moments where you have to prove to yourself how much you want it.

Corey Egan and his co-Founder Swapnil Bora were feeling pretty good about the direction their company was headed in in summer 2014. ” We had gone through a series of business competitions, we had filed patents, we had built out prototypes,” Corey remembers.

Not only that – when they looked out at the market, Corey says: “We were the first ones we had seen to put anything out there.”

Then one morning, Corey woke up and everything had changed.

“I woke up and I had like ten text messages from folks that I knew saying, ‘Hey Corey, this just launched on Kickstarter today,’ ” Corey remembers. “And it was a crowdfunding campaign for what is now one ...

How are angel investors different from venture capitalists?

We’ll dive into the details of the differences between angel investors and venture capitalist below, but here’s a wide angle of view first:

Angel investors are wealthy individuals (or groups of wealthy individuals) who invest their own money into companies.

Venture capitalists (VCs) are employees of venture capital firms that invest other people’s money (which they hold in a fund) into companies.

Now let’s take a closer at the two, before diving into the specific differences.

What are angel investors?

Angel investors are typically high net worth individuals who invest very early into the formation of a new startup company, usually in exchange for equity or convertible debt. The ro...

Crowdfunding is a method of raising capital through the collective effort of friends, family, customers, and individual investors. This approach taps into the collective efforts of a large pool of individuals — primarily online via social media and crowdfunding platforms — and leverages their networks for greater reach and exposure.

Crowdfunding is a rapidly growing industry. Below, we explore key statistics including the average raise sizes, the impact marketing has on average raise, and the underlying demographics driving crowdfunding.

KEY CROWDFUNDING STATISTICS

Crowdfunding has Raised A LOT of Money

What may have seemed like a niche way to raise money at first is now a major force in fundraising. Worldwide, companies and individuals ha...

"Oh look! Someone just sold a company similar to ours for a million billion trillion dollars. And look at that, they raised a bunch of money along the way. I bet if I had raised money I would be a huge success too."

Whether or not we think about it daily, many of us have this nagging thought in the back of our minds of the "what if?" of raising capital. We picture this alternate universe where we took on investor funding and grew to become the next great darling of our industry.

The problem with that thought process, though, is that it puts "raising capital" in the same bucket as "executing properly" which is very different.

There's a time and a place where raising capital absolutely makes sense, but often we're either not there or we misu...

If you’ve been in the startup world for more than five minutes, you’ve heard the term “venture capital.” Maybe you even know founders who have raised VC money themselves. But you might be wondering: How does venture capital work?

What is venture capital?

Venture capital is financing that’s invested in startups and small businesses that are usually high risk, but also have the potential for exponential growth.

The goal of a venture capital investment is a very high return for the venture capital firm, usually in the form of an acquisition of the startup or an IPO.

How does venture capital work?

A venture capital firm is usually run by a handful of partners who have raised a large sum of money from a group of limited partners (LPs) to invest ...

Science Fiction Fact

Now, the core technology that was once merely the product of science fiction writers’ imaginations is less science fiction than it is, well, actual science.

Fear not. Unlike their fictional counterparts — which inevitably go haywire and become less prone to “protect and serve” than “attack and sever”— the increasingly-prevalent bots of the real world are mainly concerned with using actionable data in the fight against crime.

Welcome to the dawn of the Age of Security Robots, where a new crop of tech companies are (literally) rolling out fleets of artificially-intelligent crime-fighting machinery and jockeying for position to revolutionize the $500 billion security industry.

While there are several promising entrants in...

When you’re figuring out how much a startup CEO's salary should be, there are a lot of factors to consider.

How much can the company afford to pay? What stage are you in? How much runway do you have? If you already have investors, what are their thoughts on the issue? How much do you need to support yourself and your family?

Those are just some of the questions that are probably rolling around in your head, whether you’re trying to figure out your salary as the CEO, you’re trying to figure out your co-founder’s salary as they take on the CEO position, or you’re thinking of bringing in an outside hire. Add on location, marital status, age, savings… and the list goes on and on and on.

So how do you determine what an average startup CEO salary sh...