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When you start to raise venture capital for your company you’ll quickly find there’s a common process each venture firm utilizes.

Once the partners have agreed to make an investment in you, their offer will come in the form of a term sheet.

You have to appreciate the fact that these firms are constantly pitched by every entrepreneur with an idea, so their first order of business is to separate the serious entrepreneurs who want to raise venture capital from the crazy ideas they want to run away from!

Every entrepreneur looking to raise venture capital goes through roughly the same process. They start with an introduction to the firm, get invited to pitch, make their way through a few successive meetings, and eventually wind up pitching the ...

They came, they crowdfunded, they conquered, and now it’s time to get to know them better. While the winners of the inaugural Crowd2Shelf contest come from different parts of the country and from different industries, they have one thing in common: they’ve created amazing products that are helping people do more.

We sat down with the winners and got some background into how they’ve grown into the incredible startup product companies they are today.

EVA
Wilmington, DE

Designed by LEDified, EVA™ is the world’s friendliest recessed light. They’ve combined the most efficient LED technology with an everyday practical element of a home: the remote control.

They’ve already pre-sold over 50,000 EVA™ units. Before EVA, LEDified’s founding team devel...

Coming up with a great business idea isn’t a problem. The problem is in actualizing that idea and turning it into a profitable business. The next thing that follows is the million-dollar question: “Where do I get capital to turn my idea into a profitable business?” Unless you have ready cash laying in the bank or a wealthy relative ready to come to your rescue, raising capital to start or grow your business isn’t the easiest thing to do. Resourceful entrepreneurs will always find ways of bootstrapping their ventures. However, depending on the nature of your business, there is a limit to which you can do that. It reaches a time when you need hard cash to move forward. In that regard, you need to find ways of raising capital.

The source of yo...

Private equity is a type of investment typically reserved for companies that have already grown to a larger size and are looking for a particular growth or exit strategy that isn’t available through traditional financing.

When private equity makes sense

Most startup or small businesses have little use for private equity. Technically, venture capital is considered private equity, but for the purposes of this explanation let’s leave venture capital out of it.

If you’re a startup with just an idea, you’re likely way too early for private equity. Typically private equity firms are looking for later stage companies that require much larger sums of money, usually at least $5 million, in businesses that already have some sort of assets to leverage...

Ben is currently VP Product at GoInstant, a venture-backed startup focused on changing how we share and experience the web with co-browsing technology. GoInstant was recently acquired by Salesforce.com. He is also a Founding Partner at Year One Labs, which is an early stage accelerator in Montreal. They’ve invested in five startups: Localmind, Massive Damage, HighScore House, qidiq and Happy Stuff. Three of those companies have gone on to raise follow on capital.

Prior to that Ben was the CEO and co-founder of Standout Jobs, which sold in 2010. He’s been an entrepreneur in the web space for 15+ years. Ben is also involved in a number of different projects as an advisor, consultant and mentor. His main interests include: Web/mobile startups...

Venture capital funding is both the most commonly referenced and yet commonly misunderstood form of investor capital available.

Unlike banks or more traditional investment sources, venture capital funding is all about big risks and big rewards.

Simply put, venture capital funding involves a venture capital firm investing a large sum of money (typically starting at $2 million or more) in exchange for an equity stake in your company.

Venture Capital Funding Risks and Rewards

Unlike banks or more traditional investment sources, venture capital funding is all about big risks and big rewards.

Venture capital firms specifically look for companies that offer an exceptionally large growth opportunity, which you can think of as the type of company t...

Whether you’ve raised a few million or you’ve bootstrapped your way into business, your responsibility as a founder is to leverage your company’s resources for maximum gains.

A mediocre founder spends money to maintain the status quo. A smart founder knows that every dollar coming out of their pocket needs to be justified by a healthy ROI.

While the reality is a little more complex than “you gotta spend money to make money,” these five investments have proven themselves to have high returns in the short and long-term for growing businesses.

1. Cover Your A$$ and Protect What’s Important

If headline-grabbing IPO blunders and startup lawsuits have taught us anything, it’s that quality legal advice is an invaluable asset to any startup. When y...

Next we're going to analyze our financial statements and operating expenses to see if they accurately reflect all of the financial transactions we just inputted. If you're using your own accounting software to update your company's income statement that works too.

The nice thing about our handy Income Statement is that once we plug in all the values, the story from there is essentially told. All of our columns add up and ultimately tell us the honest truth – “did we make any money?”

Did We Make Any Money?

How we use this information is key. The Analysis step here is about getting all the troops rallied (assuming we have troops to rally) and ask:

“What did we just learn, and what changes do we need to make?”

Unlike a Profit and Loss Statement, ou...

The following post is an excerpt is from Chapter 10 of the book Startup Seed Funding for the Rest of Us: How to Raise $1 Million for Your Startup – Even Outside of Silicon Valley, by Mike Belsito. This chapter focuses on the steps that people can take to build up their network, even if they don’t already have a strong set of connections within the venture community. Using tools available to everybody along with a little bit of hustle, any entrepreneur can build a strong network.

Some people quickly dismiss the idea of raising capital for their startup because of a saying that they’ve heard time and time again: “It’s all about who you know.” They make excuses such as:

“I’m not that well connected, I don’t even know any investors.”

“I don’t ...

I’ve been a part of many brand launches over the years. Some have gone smoothly and some haven’t. Looking back, the most successful ones in my mind kept it simple. In doing so, they really focused on three basic areas and how they interact with one another.

Image

When developing an image, I advise people to focus on a few key areas to start with. If you try to tackle everything that a big agency would tackle, you quickly find yourself knee-deep in templates, acronyms, and exercises that are time-consuming and confusing. The tips below are the natural conclusions you’d reach wading through that confusion — keep reading to save yourself some time and suffering.

1. Color – Finding a color palette that visually represents what you stand for is cr...