During my volunteering work at Campus TLV, I work with startups on entrepreneurship skills and technology. One of the popular topics is the subject of this post: “How to raise money”. It’s a challenging topic on many levels. You wish to raise enough money but not too much. Why? because at this point of the startup’s life you are giving a slice of your company (=equity) to the investors and you don’t want to sell too much or too low. Here are few guidelines:
- In order to raise money for your dream you need to convince investors that you are the ‘champion’ of this domain. If you are currently not the ‘best’ in the world – think how you become part of the top 1% of people in the world that do X (when X is your product/service). Savvy investors knows that it depends on the team (=you) and its ability to execute against their ideas.
In this TED talk, Malcolm Gladwell shares with us a new point of view on the famous story of David and Goliath. This new angle to look at the situation(s) reminds us of the state any startup is facing. It takes a lot of work to build a new service/product and sometimes to create or educate a market. However, again and again, startups do it while the significant (well-funded) organizations need to catch up. What looks, at first, as a disadvantage (e.g., limited budget, small teams, members that need to do ‘everything,’ no support from other players in the market, etc.’) is a true advantage when you look deeper.
Ido Green 