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Raising $$$ From Individuals

Lesson 13 from: FAST CLASS: Fund Your Business for Growth

Susan Schreter

Raising $$$ From Individuals

Lesson 13 from: FAST CLASS: Fund Your Business for Growth

Susan Schreter

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Lesson Info

13. Raising $$$ From Individuals

Lesson Info

Raising $$$ From Individuals

customers, not every customer that you will serve will be valued in the same way when you go to sell your business. What are those differences? Obviously in prior segments, I put a high value on customers that pay their bills, getting that cash and taking the risk out of nonpayment because lenders care about that. But now we're talking about building the value of your business. So other two attributes about your customer base will continue, will add up in a different way, write this down if you have a pencil at home. If you serve obviously is easy, more and more customers every year, that's growing value, we like that, but that's too easy. Right? How about a customer base that doesn't require coupons to walk through your door or come to your website when you have to discount the value of your product or service. I'm gonna discount the value of your customer base Because they're shopping on price, not because they love you or your brand aspire more and don't get them in the habit of cou...

poning from day one. Especially start up entrepreneurs do it and you're teaching customers to value you in not a good way. Find another way to bring them in. I'd much rather have a gift with purchase kind of bonus than discounting your prices all day long. I love reorders bakery. A bakery be if you have documentation about reorders that is a more valuable bakery, you can have identical sales levels but prove to me that your customers are not random customers that they are coming back to you because they're repeat happy customers. That is a more valuable business to own, create promotions that incentivize reorders and keep the data. I also like to highlight whenever you of metrics that show the number of years served. I love software businesses where they incentivize people and have an ongoing relationship with those customers through maintenance contracts. That is a more valuable company to own multi year contracts. Government contracts, contracts with corporations, contracts for services. Help prove that the moment you sell your business that your customers are not likely or less likely to go away. These are metrics that we love to see in growing valuable businesses. I also like companies that show the potential that you can expand your products or services into other products or services, ways that you can sell existing customers more. It's the upside of continuing to build that value of your business. And lastly, we talked about customers that pay upfront or in less than 60 days are valuable customer base business. Is your customers matter to how your company is valued, know who they are and prove to me that they may stay engaged in your business even if you're not involved in your business. So why no part of our creative live audience are photographers, very creative artists. Are they doing business with you or your company? I put a higher premium on customers that are doing business with your company and your company's brand rather than you individually. It's not what we want to hear is founders. But if you want to build the saleable value of your business, it's all about the brand and who they're doing business with. The brand of the person come up with strategies to help them do business with your company. Brands have value. This is my favorite example of this. And then we're gonna be diving into bringing in angel investors into your company. Brands have value and this has talked about in greater detail in your free coursework. When you could sell a product at a premium price. The most extreme example of this is Mascara, the same tube, and you can buy a tube of Mascara for over $40 from an elite French brand. where you can go to your drug store and buy the identical amount of mascara and who knows, it could come out of the same factory lines by the way, For $7, $8 $9. That's where brands have value. And this is what investors care about Starbucks. For example, they sell coffee. No, they sell their brand. What makes me drive off the road to Starbucks to get a cup of coffee. When I see the green logo, it's the Starbucks brand and the Starbucks experience when you build that brand value. And I'm emphasizing this slide because most of the creative live audience provides services. one of the most overlooked thing is building the value of your brand, make it special, make it valuable, make us love it. And that has gone. That will help you build the ultimate value of your business. And especially if you are seeking to raise money from angels or Vcs that invest in consumer space. We will ask you questions about how you will position your brand because we know our value, our ability to get money back will be dependent on how well you execute building the value of your brand with customers. Okay, Angels, what are angels? Angels are individuals, they're wealthy individuals that write checks to innovators, just like you. Actually, it's an old broadway term um for people who invested in broadway shows, they were called the Angels of broadway. Now, angels can mean anybody, an individual who writes a cheque to own a piece of companies, consumer companies, tech companies, biotech companies and they are all across the United States. Here's something to appreciate as a distinction between VCS venture capital funds and angels who makes the decision, Who do you need to convince to invest in your company? It is the individual, Usually one decision maker. That decision can be as fast or as slow as the angel wants to make. Also know that most angels some maybe retired from their primary line of work, but usually not. So that means they're almost investing as a hobby. You may send them your executive summary, but they may not stop their golf game to read your executive summary. So in your mind set in appealing to investors, you have to make it convenient and you must understand the reality that they lead busy lives and you are not first priority in their life. If you exude frustration or annoyance that they are not paying attention to you answering your emails, answering your calls, do they need that hassle, that drama from you? That is the number one way you take yourself out of the lineup. So don't do it understand. You're asking an individual, an individual to spend part of their time and day learning about you and your opportunity. You're on their time, not your time. It's really hard to hold back that frustration because I know how much you want the cash, but trust me be the cool cat. It will go a long way. Angels don't want to spend time and certainly investing companies with people they don't like or come across as brash or too self involved. These are individuals make it a little fun and interesting for them. They have a very, very strong preference for investing locally, if not regionally. Would I want you to spend any time in some upcoming slides? I'm going to be mentioning some angel investment clubs, groups of individuals that love investing in companies like you, If you live in florida, don't spend time trying to pitch or get your executive summary into a club in boston. The earlier stage business that you are, the more likely individuals will want to invest locally In general. My rule of thumb is no greater spend your focus and your time and pitching angels within miles of where you live outside of that. Your return on your time is going to go down as your business advances and you may be pitching to venture capital funds. There are venture capital funds that invest all over the United States, but they're used to it. They make a living by investing. Angels don't like hassles. They are not going to spend too much time and too much money to come to you to visit your business location, the real deal. Unfortunately, most angel investments fail, I'm going to make a very important distinction here doesn't mean the company is out of business. Most angel investments fail, which means the cash value that they put into the business. The business did not grow beyond that or became less than that or what. They never put the company in a position where it could be sold to another company in order for the angels to get their money back. Most angel investments fail. So if you're talking to active angels that act right, A lot of checks to entrepreneurial companies, they have this in their brain. They have experienced the pain of losing all their money. Don't discount that in how they think about you and the value of investing in their business. The term for a business that the value goes down, where the investment value goes down is underwater. That came up a lot during the real estate crisis, right where people owned homes that may be worth less than the mortgage on that home. That's an underwater house, underwater equity. This is what individual investors worry about. It's likely going to wipe out their cash and make them not want to pony up more cash to you. How does this happen? How does this happen? And so fast? Usually within two years, maybe even a year of an angel investor writing a check, shocking. How does it happen this way? You're afraid to ask for the right amount of cash that, you know, you need to complete your product if you want to open a new location in SAn Diego and you know, darn well, It will take $100,000, for example, but you settle, you say, uh, I'm just gonna go raise a little bit of money to just get going Where you stop raising capital because you've got 50 and then you can start spending 50. But you don't have the other 50 to get the job done. What have you just done? You've started out on a six day hike with three days of food, you're in trouble, investors in remorse, trouble, so you don't do that. I hate this phrase. All I need is just a little bit of money to just get going. No, I want you to be more purposeful in deciding how much cash you need to grow. If you're going out on a seven day trip, Bring seven days worth of food. That's the thinking, that's the mentality. Don't shortchange yourself. This is how failed investments happen, this is how failed companies happen. Here's another way, here's what's in your brains. I know it for first time entrepreneurs, you think the time is startup, you should get credit because you've been in business for a while because you've invested money and you think the value of your company is like a little rocket ship, it could be little growth or high growth, but in your brains it is a straight line upward. Doesn't that make sense to you, isn't it? Because you know, I got money here and now six months later, it's worth more. Why? Because I've been, it's six months later, because I've been doing stuff not at the early stage, not at the seed stage. Here's how companies gain in value looks very different. It's this step up, you ever heard the expression? It's very common in the venture community getting to the next level of growth, I need to get to the next level. It really originates from value. So if, for example, venture um inc wants to develop a cool software platform and it costs Um $500,000 to build and to fully test it and get it to its beta, a launch a beta test site. You only should get credit for that valuation boost when the site launches. If you only get 80 of the code written, why are you getting you really technically are still back here at the point of start. It's an upward when you complete things. When you complete a milestone, when you get a patent, when you file a patent, when you start selling customers. When you cut a deal with a great distributor, it is not like this, it is boom achievement achievement, that's how companies are valued. So if you think and are working with investors, especially on big ideas, you pick a dollar amount in order to reach a milestone of value, You raise money to build a product, not a half a product when you reach the milestone, guess what? And if you need more cash, you are valued, you're raising money at the next value point. But here's what it looks like. If you don't, somebody raises the wrong amount of money, 300, when They know they really needed 5000. If they are lucky enough to raise an extra 200,000 or more, they are likely to be in the world of what are called down rounds. What do you think? A down round means I call it death? But anyway, you are playing catch up. Have you lost your credibility a bit? Should we trust that you really know how much it's gonna cost for you to complete the product. So we're devaluing your company because we have concerns about the management. Do they have the maturity to pick the right number and to think about what they really need to get something done? How much cash do you need to get something done? You've already told us big checkmark, we can't trust you. We don't necessarily believe that you're going to tell us the truth or if you know what you need. So right then and there you are negotiating from a point of weakness, not strength and number two. Your evaluation as a company hasn't advanced. If anything, it has dropped. So if you are lucky enough to find investors willing to stick with you and give you another chance to succeed, we are now building in more protections in case you do it to us again, we're gonna give you tougher deal terms and we're gonna value your company less. It's a down round and it is most painful to the founders. So all it took Was you being very careful, not saying I need to raise 500,000, I need a million. Million. Sounds good. And not achieving anything for that cash makes sense, painful outcomes. So, think earlier on today, when we were talking about all the horrible things investors can do, let's set the stage of when investors erupt and are most likely to fire a Ceo demo to Ceo. Would this cause them to raise some concerns if and your very first thing you raise the wrong amount of cash or you lie to us on what you really need to succeed. We're gonna force a smaller equity stake for you were upset. We do we want to protect our position or we're gonna say we're gonna walk away. You won't get more money from us. You're going to have to go find somebody else who is then going to say, how much do you need, what have you accomplished so far? Let me see your cap table, which is a listing. Have everybody else who has ever invested and I may call them up and say, hey, what do you think of this guy who created the trauma here? The investors are the founder, do this one thing. Well, it's being a great entrepreneur is picking and choosing and doing a few things supremely. Well, I know you think it's important for you to do every job. No, but there are certain jobs I want you to approach with precision and purpose raising the right amount of money. It doesn't scare us when you're honest and say it will cost $1 million dollars to accomplish this. So maybe the approaches, If we want to break it up in a smaller round, let's agree on the milestones of what you're going to accomplish. Let's be candid about it. But if you start by lying or misrepresenting the truth of what you know better. It will end in disaster. Stop it. You are not a magician. You know your business better than we do. If you say it takes $500,000 to do one thing we're gonna pretty believe, we may ask you questions and challenge you a bit, but we are giving you the freedom to succeed or fail. That should have led up everybody. Yeah, I'd rather you know now because you are empowered to do it right. Can everybody pick the right number? Are you going to spend more time picking the right number? Good, Okay, where can you find angel investors? Here's the good news last year, over 70 about 70,000 companies in the United States got angel investment Capital and that's all the ones that we have been able to track and I'm sure is so much more. And that doesn't include when friends and family members and local neighbors put money into deals. There are lots of us out there where I put, there are lots of different places to go for Angels. I want you guys thinking of yourselves and developing a solicitation strategy that favors going first to people who are most likely going to write checks and love doing that. Doesn't that make sense? You're the deal shoppers. What's in my top priority list? Angel investment clubs and what are they? And we've got some listed in our course materials for you. Angel investment clubs are groups of wealthy individuals who come together maybe monthly, maybe quarterly. And hear pitches just like we heard earlier today, we're going to ask you questions, we may have lunch at the same time and then we decide individually or as a club to contact you and talk more about your business. Here's what doesn't happen at angel investment clubs with the exception of business plan competitions and I'm frequently a judge at a lot of business playing competitions. Usually we make a decision at the end of the day of a business plan competition. If you pitch us at a club meeting, don't expect to walk out with a check that day. It is the start. I don't think it is unsuccessful if we're not running after you at that moment to talk to you more and usually I go and cheer up everybody because I see their faces or you know, I said, come on, it's oh, it's good. But usually what we have to do at the end of the club meeting is go back to work somewhere, right? It's not all about you, but I want you to start the engagement process with us. Successful entrepreneurs are great targets to invest in your business. Semi retired executives. If people have left a big, big corporate job but still want to be engaged, they are prime targets to invest in your business, especially if they have expertise in your industry, search them out, they offer double firepower, shared purpose angels. What do I mean by this? And it's my term? Uh if you were starting a medical technology company that might be used by Dennis dentists, may appreciate the value of that technology, let's say you were starting an educational company or tools for kids with asperger's as an example who might be great candidates who want to see more and more educational tools out there. Um wealthy individuals with kids with special needs. So whatever your business, think about where in the industry, how can I connect and add an extra motivation for you to succeed incubators, there's some regions of the United States that have specific technology incubators that want people like you and sometimes those incubators have cash to invest in you. What was I put as secondary priorities and I'm going to get to the issues related to equity crown fitting in an upcoming segment. There are problems with us. I like these areas to go to first their new regulations coming down associated with turning to crowd crowdfunding platforms to get equity investors, which is different than donation investors. A lot of these platforms serve a broad regional audience if your seed or start up, what did I say? There is a strong preference from early stage companies to invest locally. So start there, your success rate will be higher. Where are some angel clubs across the United States? It's not just in Silicon Valley and because of map, I want to have listed couple names, but they are really in major metropolitan areas all across the United States. Atlanta Technology Tech Coast Angels puget Sound Venture Club, uh, some angel clubs um, invest just in women entrepreneurs, Sarah capital. In the pacific Northwest, there are women who only invest in women cos there's great diversity in a lot of these clubs, someone high tech, some don't care. It could be low tech or high tech. They're out there, research them industry specific. What about a club that only invests in films for entrepreneurial filmmakers? How cool is that? There is a club that only invest in entrepreneurs who are recovering addicts. There is a club that only invests in kind of sustainable food businesses. How cool is that? I mentioned before, Sarah Capital, there's also asked to great Organization on the West Coast and the East Coast that specializes in mentoring entrepreneurial women run businesses. Golden seeds is another one. Sometimes your college that you went to and may have graduated from 10 years, 20 years, 30 years ago is developing their own incubators and angel investment clubs, all from your own alumni explore it. It may be there, I said in a prior segment of the workshop 10, 15 years ago, there weren't the number or the breath through the diversity of both angel and debt sources in America and it is really true. Don't say to yourself, they're not there. They are there. It's a matter of you finding them. What's your prep steps? How do you gear up for presenting yourself to angels? You're gonna need an executive summary, which is an easy description of simply how much money you want. What are you going to use it for? Tell me and convinced me that customers are gonna want to buy what you are making or delivering emphasis again on customers, customers are the route to your success cash flow. But the growing value of your business, the more attention you place on customers, writing checks to your company and why and how they will do that is more important to me. Then the product description. A lot of times people make the mistake of spending two pages describing all the cool features of the product. Cool, But is that the best use of your executive summary time? No. What builds value products don't fill value. Customers build value, brands, bill value, gross profit margins build huge value. How about putting some numbers on the first page of your executive somewhere. Put all the firepower in the first page of your executive summary. If I don't see, especially if I am reading through dozens of business plans for a business plan competition. Oh my gosh! I I know how to scan really fast. And there is a point of brain dead where I may not read to the second page because I have so much to read. Put it in the first page. Made me want to read the second page. I know some investors that will give you the first paragraph next next. Make it easy for us. Put the points of value in there. If you've got a software design that can deliver gross profit margins and long term contracts, right for your customers and your company. Gosh, put it in the first page. We love investing in stuff like that. We love recurring revenue. We love high gross profit margins. We love technology that's patentable. Put it up there. Start there, wet our appetite for the stuff we love Now. Do I need to know day one, the inner workings of your product? No. Plus I want you to hold back if it's potentially patentable, especially if you're posting some of this stuff to crowdfunding sites. I don't want you to lose patent rights by publishing before you file that patent. Remember 1st to file, 1st to file. Right? So that's the starting point executive summary and being able, if you meet me and I have five minutes, what are you going to talk about? Think about the high points, then I'll meet you for coffee. Some people call it the elevator pitch. I'd like you to practice it. I'd like you before you present your executive summary or asked to appear in a local angel investment club, find another entrepreneur who has been down this path, find a business person to sit and listen and think about and ask you questions. First. Go to our creativelive course materials, get a sense of what we're about to ask. You have your answers ready to go pure and simple, be your best. You only get one shot. I want, we already know why it's so important for you to know how much money you want to raise. We're not going to talk to you too much about that day one, we're gonna want the broad strokes of why there's a market growing market demand and by the way, all the same things I'm saying for angels, dido for VCS at the seed and early stage eventually we'll get back to that smart amount to raise, but you're going to have to put that or a very tight range in your executive summary. I want you to adopt a price to move strategy if you're out to sell a used car. Are you Chevy? Are you gonna put a Ferrari price on it? No, that's gonna sit on the shop lot for a long time. We want to deal the earlier you are in the venture finance stages offer a deal. If you don't have a product, don't have customers, you have an idea and I will sit and debate this all day long with entrepreneurs. I have a billion dollar idea And it is not worth at the start up any. Less than $5 million dollar valuation. It will be worth billions to investors. Everybody is going to make money. Ah but only if you get some cash in the door we ever get there. It's with our cash plus the idea plus your execution that builds value. So if your piggish at the start, there are some angel clubs that will say don't come to us. We don't actively consider deals with more than a starting valuation of $1.5 million dollars or less. They've even put a cap on him. Say that's for somebody else to go into. So price it to move. Be reasonable. Not your first round should not be the pig round. Right, okay. Your solicitation strategy for getting angels. I don't want you to approach one angel at a time or one target at a time. Well, I've targeted them. I think they liked what I was doing and nodding and so forth. No, I want you to develop a campaign strategy. I want you to go through the list of clubs in your area, right them down. I want you to brainstorm with some of your friends. Are there any shared purpose angels or types of angels that maybe candidates or good partners for what I'm trying to do? Educators, for example, people who have invested in education businesses before regional accountants and lawyers. Often our resources for introductions to angels. But I want to say beware beware of this. Yes. Securities Council are very important and great collaborators for you, but sometimes they're gonna expect they will be the attorney on your deal. Is it a reasonable expectation? Yes. So if you go too far and hit up too many attorneys and make sort of implied commitments that they're the attorney. You know, beware always be candid with. People don't mislead people you'll know who you want to partner with, but don't over promise things that you can't necessarily deliver. You don't need five attorneys to work with. Right. Same thing with regional accounts. Don't promise what you can't deliver. You don't need too many professional service providers, all on staff for your company. The other thing and we're gonna talk about this in a later segment. I like it best before developing too many legal documents that you already have some experience and feel comfortable that you've got your pitch, your business model down the right amount of money to raise. Unfortunately, I run across too many entrepreneurs who will meet an attorney who will then charge up to $20,000 to create a massive, big, thick offering memorandum to help sell this deal. And then you find out after talking to a few people now you really want to focus on this business first. So this big document is worthless. You all know, oh, an attorney a big amount of money for a document you will never use, hold back on that stuff. Make sure because if you end up raising money from Vcs, you never needed that document to begin with. We're gonna talk a little bit further about it, but it's cautionary about relationships with attorneys don't get into a situation where a number of entrepreneurs say I I owe this attorney tons of money, did all this work and I don't know what I got for and I can't even use it. You're the boss. Next wave, shared purpose individuals, regional executives, retired professional there maybe in certain states are now developing state run accelerators because more and more states are recognizing that entrepreneurial companies are the biggest source of future employment and they want to motivate people to start within their states, Check them out in your own state. Usually they're under the Department of Economic Development, They may know right off the bat relationships too active angels or help present, get you pitch ready so that you get funding companies that get funding, get to employ more people. States are getting smart about this and then regional investment clubs, all of these potential. I want you to come up with a long list now. Why? It's a better use of the time. But also if you go one and get a no, it's frustrating and you may start to lose confidence, you are better to take a wider net approach. You can emotionally deal with a few knows and you're more empowered to say to that, no gee, what can I do to improve my presentation, my pitch? What are some of those risk issues that you are most concerned about that? Maybe I need to improve my business plan for who should I turn to next? This is how you create, Turn nose into more targets and you continue to improve your pitch in your presentation and take the risk, the perceived risk out of investing in your business. Every meeting with any potential investor, you shouldn't be talking all the time. You are selling a piece of your company. And as my grandfather used to tell me, Susan, you can't learn anything if you're the only one talking. Yeah, there's a really don't always listen to him, but that's what he's saying. It's wise advice in every meeting, ask for feedback. Ask for guidance. What are you concerned about? Learn from it and then make your plan better. And in that process, you might end up with a higher valuation by the time you get the deal done. So there's gold in all of those meetings, even if there's no brainstorm on purpose the right way as I was starting to hint to is asking for questions, asking purposeful questions, a respectful attitude. A lot of these people have been around the block before, especially if they've built a company up to successful sale. You are the beginner, you're the rookie. Let them help you minimize beginner's mistakes when you exude confidence without arrogance, maturity, respect. Wouldn't that be the start of a wonderful relationship for one person to come out and be the lead investor and say, I want, I'm gonna bring some of my friends into this. I trust this guy, this woman has her together. I want to work and see them succeed. That's how angel deals get done. One lead investor brings in their posse and they have to believe in you and your company mission because you are the execute er you are the one, you're the captain of the plane. We only win when you win. There's a huge amount of trust. So present that persona don't say, oh, I'm not good at this, I'm not gonna, you know, don't start. Unfortunately. Too many women don't make that right first impression. We don't exude success and confidence and collaboration and in little ways we devalue our own our own worth as a business owner. Do you want to invest in that now? Not at all. Here's the wrong way. Susan. Tell me all your friends who write checks to entrees. Can you give me a list of the phone numbers and email addresses of the people who invest? Sure, sure. Let me get back to you. No, but too many people asset will you invest? Don't ask that question. Don't ask you yes or no. When I was just introduced to you, give us time to love you. Let us fall in love with what you're doing, explain why you're excited about the opportunity play off that don't jump to this. It's like asking me going out on a first date in Saint Susan, will you marry me? That's what too many entrepreneurs do wrong. What do you mean? Are you crazy? No, it's a slow cell build, trust and respect. Give me confidence that you're not gonna blow it in six months. Some other things make it convenient for them. Don't have them come to you, go to their office, is there coffee shop near you? If they have time before work, after work, what is convenient for you don't assume they have a half hour, get to the point early. In fact when you sit down with them for coffee or wherever they are, how much time do you have right now? If they say 10 minutes, keep the beginning part of 10 and then lead into the next opportunity to meet with them. They're individuals busy individuals. Show you respect them. Because we are thinking as I've said in prior segments how you treat us is how we think you will treat customers because you're selling something. I think it's a great advantage to maybe pick up some great sells books and just look for tips on how you improve without hype. No hype in this because we want a different level of trust. When somebody buys a toy from you that's a $50 investment. I don't know what but you're asking people to part with their hard earned money in big chunks and there's no way for them to get it back for a long long time. If V. C. Bound here's the key thing um And we're gonna be going over some of these deal terms in future segments as well as you'll find great resources in our special tools that are available for subscribers. one possible way to speed check writing among angels, especially if they know this is a big idea, big opportunity and it's likely that you are going to raise another round of capital. one of the ways without getting too technical now is to say, let me structure an instrument in which you are essentially buying a security. We're not going to value the company today for you to price your deal, but I'll take your check for $500,000 today. And what angels worry about is the down round that ultimately when you go to vcs, they may negotiate a value that is less than what the angels paid here. It happens too often. So they recognize the value of getting going. They want to see you succeed. So what do you do? Let's write a check and that check will be valued at, whatever the next round is valued at. Plus we'll give you a little sweetener because you wrote, we'll give you a little extra an interest or principal or a stock option or weren't some other sweetener for writing the check earlier and for that out of risk. So that's one way to take the risk out of writing a check when we know more money is coming in and it could be big money and they may negotiate in a different way that's called a convertible deal. A bridge deal. Um, great way to give investors confidence. It also says to us, you get it and you are thinking bigger about what you want to accomplish in business. We hate it when we invest in around and then you can't raise more money because then we're all out of business, we've lost our money. Remember angels lose most of the value of their investments? But when they hit it, it helped pays for the losses. Okay. Um, actually I thought I corrected this. Credit investor is a deal term to know what is an accredited investor. The Securities Exchange Commission has created this term. It has implications for crowdfunding sites as well as angel investment clubs. What initially without getting into securities laws too much is we are more comfortable, especially in startup and early stage businesses when you solicit people who can afford to lose all their money. Our, our sophisticated about the perils and opportunities of investing in privately held businesses, This number should actually be 200,000. That's, that was a typo. Um, we, how do we set this, what qualifies as an accredited investor? It's somebody with a primary net worth household net worth of $ million dollars that no longer new rules includes primary real estate, So they cannot include their house as part of their net worth. They need $1 million dollars Plus an annual income of 200,000. It's higher for married couples and that income is likely to continue in the future if they've just lost their job, That should be a warning signal that gee this financial situation may go downward and they're financially sophisticated. These investors are fair game. Actually, the types of investors I want you to specifically target. It's going to come up again in crowdfunding. The regulatory requirements are much, much less when you are pitching these kinds of investors versus the person down the street who may have $20,000 in savings. And that's, it Has a $50,000 job and can't afford to lose that 20,000.

Class Materials

Bonus Materials with Purchase

Action Steps to Perfect Your Executive Summary.pdf
Preparing Projections for Investors.pdf
Understanding Investor Term Sheet Deal Terms.pdf
50 Questions Investors Ask Entrepreneurs.pdf
Sample Angel Investment Clubs.pdf
Sample VCs.pdf
Start On Purpose - Brand Equity.pdf

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Yes, I liked the first lesson, and then nothing...locked up? I can"t figure how to continue

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