How to you raise Capital for your startup?

[Brendan]

On another forum I am part of a lot of people were discussing the methods they use to save money for a deposit on a property and investment properties.

It would be great to know how you all raised, or are still raising capital for your business?

Do you put a huge chunk of savings away from your 9-5 job? Are you eating 2min noodles instead of going out for lunch every day? Or are you selling items on ebay or the trading post to generate cash?

Or maybe something else!

[J_D]

Good post Brendan.

I am currently trying to raise capital for a project that has been on the cards for a while now but i've never started cause i need a big chunk of cash to even get it started. I guess this is mainly because i've thrown my money into other smaller projects that aren't as scary to think about the risks etc... (so if you know anyone with a spare stack of cash.. hehe)

But to answer the questions, i've always been terrible at saving but good at making sure my 'commitments' are paid for... so i plan for borrowing.. keeps me honest.

*edit* oh yeah, thought about selling items on ebay to make some extra coin... but no one has been able to figure out how to add 3 more hours in the day yet. hehe

JD

[HWT]

Depending on what you are doing, there are a number of Government grants up for grabs. COMET is the biggest one.

We missed out on a grant a while back for the most irritating reason - they had our business plan for months, they loved the idea, they drafted and redrafted and went through it all SO many times, and rejected it based on something we had in line one paragraph one and repeated all over the document - 'self published on the internet'. They wouldn't fund unless we had a contract with a publisher, but we met every single other criteria they were looking for and they were quite enthusiastic about the idea. That was a big waste of time and effort on everyone's behalf that we wouldn't have pursued if we (and our contact who was doing the drafting with us) knew that upfront.

So if you're going to chase grants/VC, don't do it one at a time, send out a bunch at once. And read the small print - ALL the small print. They can be a very time consuming process.

[The Y-man]

1. Bank of Parents.
2. Bank of Partner's parents
3. Bank of rest of family
4. Bank of extended family
5. Bank of work colleagues (usually not very good)
6. Bank of friends (those you are willing to lose...)

Cheers,

The Y-man

[Slade]

1. Bank of friends (those you are willing to lose...)

Cheers,

So true.. so many people seem to miss that, get caught up in the emotion and dont think that the business could cause issues in the friendship.. I would say 8 times out of 10 friendships tend to go south after money changes hands between friends