Raising capital is by far the most unpleasant task an entrepreneur will ever have to perform, so allow me to share the big secret with you on how to get it.  All investors, from angels to venture capitalists, want to back a sure thing or the next best thing to it. The next best thing is a company with traction (i.e., actual sales to bona fide customers). Oftentimes, this means that the startup employs a transitional business model which sells only a part of or a service related to the main concept.

No one reads business plans and no one takes you seriously if that's all you have to show.

So how do you start to get traction? Well, savvy entrepreneurs like the ones on the annual lists of fastest growing companies tend to know, and that's what the Smart Startup Guide teaches you.




                     The object of education is not knowledge, it's action.
                                                                                           - Thomas Kempie







The Free Stuff

First, this site offers for free most of the information other sites attempt to nickle and dime you to death over: venture capital documentation, business plan and executive summary samples, directories of venture capital firms, directories of angel investor groups, and lots more. It’s all here and for free.

The site also offers a wealth of free yet sound advice on determining whether or not you fit venture capital and angel investor investment criteria, how to find and approach investors, and finally how to negotiate from a position of power rather than of desperation.

The Premium Stuff

Second, for those of you who have already grown weary of pounding the pavement looking for investors, we offer our premium content, the Smart Startup Guide, which teaches you how the tiny minority of truly savvy entrepreneurs by-passes the wretched game of chasing capital and moves straight to cashflow. The Guide is a ten-year long labor of love which explains how the truly great entrepreneurs start without outside capital.

As with all good things in life, the Guide costs money. As the saying goes, you get what you pay for. However, compare its price with the amount of time you have already lost or stand to lose writing pointless business plans and chasing uninterested investors. Only about one in every 500 entrepreneurs chasing capital attracts any. The other 499 entrepreneurs simply end up wasting six to eighteen months of their lives in a futile quest.


Memorize this distinction:


In a nutshell, the Guide teaches you how to create the cash which will both start your business and get you taken seriously by investors later on. Even better, some entrepreneurs realize after using the Guide that they won't need investors at all. Good or good?


Pay Special Attention Here

If there is one lesson that I want you to leave this site with, it's this: a nicely polished professional business plan by itself, plus $3, is worth a grande latte at Starbucks.  Investors don't care about your business plan, they want to see traction first.

Peter,

I bought the Smart Startup Guide a few months ago.  I have been a VC with a top firm, and a successful software  entrepreneur. Your book is a service to entrepreneurs. I found  myself in repeated agreement with you. I too came to view the capital-chasing process as a stupendous waste of time for 99.9999% of startups.

The business press has glamorized venture capital and created a whole package of myths around what is a very tough reality. Most entrepreneurs have no understanding that to secure financing they are making VCs the owners and themselves the paid help, whatever percentage of the company the VCs get.

And few capital seekers have a true understanding of "standard" VC deal  terms. Unfortunately the VC firms have huge PR firms and it is only  the happy-spin story that ever gets told. Few horror stories make it  to the press.

Keep up the good work!