How to Raise Funds for Your Early-Stage Startup

Whether you’ve decided on bootstrapping your startup or actively looking for investors, the question on a lot of entrepreneurs’ minds is: how do you raise funds when you’ve basically got nothing? Not a lot of data, not a lot of sales, and not a lot of experience. How do you convince other people to believe and spend money on you when there are even days that YOU doubt yourself?

First things first, let’s get this out of the way: your self-confidence is not going to be an issue. The important thing is you have the conviction, the courage, and the self-discipline to show up no matter what.

As you gain more experience, acquire more data, and build up your connections and experiences, you just have to focus on the most important things that will help you secure funding.

Know when to spend and how to spend it

The most successful startups have one thing in common: they know where they need to spend their money, regardless if they’ve decided on bootstrapping or have been funded by investors from the get-go.

Knowing your financial strategy is going to help you secure the funds and ensure that the funds don’t go to waste. Whether the money will go to marketing campaigns or to hiring the right people, the important thing is you are 100% sure about when and where you’ll be spending it. And you can back up your decision with cold hard facts (aka data).

Remember: growth after getting funds is not an automatic sign that you’re truly growing as a company. Getting more sales after getting funds can sometimes be a SYMPTOM of securing the extra cash. So make sure that even before you secure funds, you have a solid finance and growth strategy in place.

Prove your worth

A lot of investors are extremely smart and can spot a bad idea from a mile away. How do you even prove your worth when you only have limited data and a few paying customers? And let’s face it, getting the first few customers is the easy part. The trouble lies in retaining them, getting new people on board, and sustaining this growth for the next few years. Once you know exactly how to change and adapt as a company and can confidently say that you can never exhaust channels or run out of customers, then that’s a good start.

Branding and marketing

This is where branding and marketing comes in. Branding is how you shape your brand in your consumers’ (and potential investors) minds. Marketing is how you get people (and potential investors) interested in your startup.

The truth is that how your brand is perceived will heavily impact your desirability from a customer’s and investor’s point of view. If marketing and branding is something you can’t focus on right now, why not “duplicate” yourself and get a Taotter hustler to do what YOU would’ve done if you were able to dedicate a few hours each day towards your branding & marketing campaigns.

Even the best tech companies admit that they could be doing better in the marketing and branding department. So stay ahead of the game and make sure that your brand is perceived as valuable as possible.

Get to work

Now the next step is to get to work and look for investors. Unless you get lucky and manage to find yourself on a TV set, pitching to famous angel investors, then this next step might prove to be more tedious and boring. Gust, Crunchbase, LinkedIn, and even some Facebook groups can help lead you to the right investor.

Again, if this is something that you might have a hard time doing, outsource the research process to qualified freelancers or ‘hustlers’ from Taotter.

Find the decision-maker

After you’ve done your research through the sites we’ve listed above, do further research to make sure that you’re dealing with decision-makers. If you’ve managed to secure meetings with people who don’t make the final decisions, then you’re just going to prolong the pitching process.

Focus on yourself (and your team)

Here’s the thing about investors: they invest when they know the value of the product/service AND they trust the people behind the brand. A brilliant team who are all passionate, driven, and out to change minds and hearts is what pulls a lot of investors in. Sometimes, the pitch is technically fantastic but it just feels ‘meh’. Why? It’s because investors know right off the bat when a founder or co-founder has a few red flags hidden behind their backs.

Be passionate, practice your pitches, and make sure you show (and not just tell) potential investors what your brand is truly all about.

If you’re ready to bring more people to your team, Taotter’s team of ‘hustlers’ or trained-for-startups virtual assistants will handle your digital marketing, operations, or product development. Commission a hustler for a one-time gig or project so you can focus on the things that need your full attention.