Seed funding and venture capital - mind the gap.

Definitely the type of content I would like to see more of on BHW

Any further tips on identifying the right VC's and choosing a compatible fit for your business?
I should imagine that if somebody is offering you a cash injection the temptation is to grab it with both hands.

If anybody is looking to raise their first round of funding for their startup, I just posted an AppSumo Freebie here:
http://www.blackhatworld.com/blackh...-you-need-raise-your-first-round-appsumo.html
Might be useful

Thanks W130SN

Finding the right VC's that's the battle! The most active guys are probably the full time VC's BUT, and this is a personal point. I prefer to work with VC's that have exited something they have built that's relevant to the industry you're in - it's the old smart money v's dump money problem. Dumb money will probably pay more but Smart money will, usually, be more entrepreneurial and help build your business. Meeting ay investor in real life is key. Ideally attend a local (to them) event that is industry relevant and see how many contacts they have, it becomes fairly clear very quickly if they are the type of person you want to work with.

Finally - if you're jumping the first person who offers you money you started this too late unless you're in a very very niche industry there are always people around that want to invest if your product is good enough. If you only get 1 offer of 100 offers ask them for a week to think about it, take 48 hours out from your everyday life, book into a hotel / meeting space / somewhere no one knows you and get some head space. Then bang through a business plan focussing on this person / group's investment requirements.

You've got this far - now it's down to your gut.

W130SN said:

Definitely the type of content I would like to see more of on BHW

Any further tips on identifying the right VC's and choosing a compatible fit for your business?
I should imagine that if somebody is offering you a cash injection the temptation is to grab it with both hands.

Click to expand...

no withdrow option

Good stuff, indeed. Are there plans to include a bio section in the AMAs?

I'm sorry to say that I don't know much about your expertise in this area, and I think it might be helpful to explain to the community why a particular person was chosen to talk about a topic.

I may have missed something, but are you a VC, entrepreneur, or middleman/agent to one of those parties?

Something I will be needing to be more informative on soon, thanks

This was really informative, and something out of the box. Great!

Interesting post nuf-ced, just want to add on the profit margin & accounting side of things. When you are evaluating your margins make sure that you are evaluating your cost as accurately as possible, what I mean by this is that if you hire someone to work on a product for you, you should have a portion of their salary/wages (unless of course this person would be working for you regardless - this would be a fixed cost) are being allocated to the cost of the product.


For example, If I was to create a network of sites I would need to pay for the domain & hosting say, $11.00 (variable cost - it is dependent on the number of websites created), a portion of the workers expense (say the worker can create content on 2 sites an hour, and you pay them $14.00/hour, you would allocate $7.00 to your variable-cost/website).



Essentially your cost per site would be:

Domain & Hosting: $11.00
Content: $7.00
Total/site: $18.00

And lets say we sell each site for $50.00.

Your Profit Margin would be:

Sell Price: $50.00
Variable Costs: 18.00
Profit Margin: 32.00
Profit Margin % - 64%

Definitions:
Fixed Cost - An expense which you would have regardless of the product you would be creating.
Variable Cost - A cost associated with the production of each unit made, it is dependent on the number of units made.

Hope this helps.

Tks for your posting, Something I will be needing to be more informative on soon, if you are unable to find the topic you are interested in please access here http://factoflife.net/science-and-technology/science to learn more

Thanks for this info. I have bookmarked the page!!

How to make connections with VCs etc?

This is an interesting topic. Remember vc money isn't free. You are expected to pay it back and many companies have been forced to do things they wouldn't have done otherwise if they didn't have to pay the capitalists back their money.

I'm only interested currently because I want to pay my team members a salary.

Thanks for the info !