Don’t Forget Creative Fund Raising

Let me tell you the story of how I raised $100,000 to fill a gap needed to purchase a new home for my young family years ago. I had located a beautiful home that would be a stretch to finance, and had arranged for a first mortgage from the bank, and a second from the seller.
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Accelerators: A Recent and Positive Trend

Are you a candidate for an accelerator? You’ll give up some small amount of equity to the accelerator, receive some amount of cash in return during the program, and learn more in a short time than you’d expect from more formal education programs.
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Is Asset-Based Lending for You?

Asset-based financing is a specialized method of providing structured working capital and term loans that are secured by accounts receivable, inventory, machinery, equipment and/or real estate.
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Equity Financing: Great for Rapid Growth Startups

We’ve spoken of financing a young company through friends and family, known as “inside angels.” There are three classes of equity investors for early stage businesses that we have not yet considered. Often grouped into formal organizations, these investors are sophisticated, helpful, and connected.
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The “Inciting Incident” and Investors

If you are a screenplay writer, you are familiar with the dogma of the inciting incident. In a movie, the inciting incident is the event at the beginning of the story which causes the hero’s life to be completely transformed and irrevocably changed, and which makes the whole story unfold.
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It’s Mostly in the Execution

“Everybody’s got a plan—until they are punched in the face,” stated boxer Mike Tyson. My experience personally reviewing over three hundred executive summaries each year, all sent to me unsolicited, seems to bear out the truth in Tyson’s statement.
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