Are you looking to raise funds?

Karun Varma 

Raising money for the startups is challenging, and most of the start-ups don’t have the family silver to fund themselves. Investing in start-ups is what intelligent and smart individuals do; to put their money to work. 

Investing in start-ups is no longer limited to the Uber-wealthy, with the changing times the investing is now open to the accredited investors too. 

So, in the course of fundraising, you will come across a spectrum of investors ranging from the native prince to the real estate and liquor barons to techies who have made it big in the IT industry. You will have to learn to swing your presentation to suit their baggage of success. Remember speaking is what you do, and hearing is what happens in their ears; learn to tune your message to their receiving frequency.

Meeting ground

As a newbie in the start-up market, meeting investors can be tough. Even in the face of repeated insults, closed doors, you need to be on track to meet the investors and convince them that your idea is worth the investment. 

Don’t get flustered by the ferocity of competition and moreover your contemporaries might have better offers, deals, or more domain expertise. If this was not enough of a deterrent, they might have a “godfather” who will get them to the negotiation table with going through the regular channels.

The key is not to get any investor; it is about finding an intelligent investor for your start-up, someone who believes in you and is ready to put the resources to back your journey. In the early stages of raising funds, it is better to avoid the top players in the funding ones, remember legendary investors may not be the best partners in the market testing phase.

Proper closure

Closing a deal with the investor is about finding the balance between his needs and your aspiration, it is akin to dating if you are trying to convince someone to go out on a date with, you can’t be too desperate or uninterested either. 

To find the balance try contacting investors who are not very well known in the market, sound them off about your idea and plans. See their reaction and fine-tune your pitch for further rounds. Use this strategy to work the way up to more prestigious and hallowed investors.

An investor has all the power to either make or break a start-up. An excellent and competent team of investors is one of the vital ingredients for scaling up your business. So ensure that you have enough time on hand; it takes an average of six months to raise an investment round. It is a ruthless world with less than 2 per cent chance of securing a good funding round; polish your shoes and style if you want to be in the game. Happy fundraising!

For a perfect move

Investor pitch competitions in incubators and accelerators are a useful platform, for the young entrepreneur to showcase their talent and idea. For perfecting your pitch, you need to do all the legwork yourself and practice the pitch multiple times before the demo day. This work cannot be delegated. Remember if you want to go to the heaven, you need to die first.

Instead of jumping straight to the PowerPoint deck, craft your elevator pitch and after that move to the why of the business. This style will make pitching easier as the potential investors see a rationale for the way you are doing or proposing to do things. Simplicity rules and complexity sucks, try keeping your idea simple so that the elevator pitch is concise and crisp if you cannot speak about your business in thirty seconds, retake a look at it.

Getting started

Start the fundraising activity by identifying potential investors and ranking them in the degree of usefulness to your business, try looking for investors who can introduce you to a big customer early on. Educational background and past associations are an excellent way to map the network tree, use online angle listing and VC platforms to understand and target pivotal investors. Investors have become more accessible with the emergence of a vast number of crowd-funding websites.

— The writer is a real estate professional in APAC.