Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Getting Venture Capital

Getting venture capital is not easy. It is often a case of being lucky, or knowing the right people. However, you do need basic planning to get into the lottery or game. To ask for funds, an adequate game plan or budgeting proposal is a must.

Incubators were a fad for a time, for the very early stage of venture funding. They proved to be a flop in the past. Incubators required lots of hand-holding, a sort of kindergarten for entrepreneurs. The problem was, there were too many infants and teachers often had no ability to instruct at the required MBA levels. The eventual dot com bubble showed how futile that effort was.

Angel capital is now used for real early-stage startups, Classic venture capital is for the level after you generally have some vestige of business operating.

Getting VC funds is usually a sort of lottery, should you have no connections. Those who get funds generally have those, or have gotten funds for earlier ventures.

There is a good reason why VC funding is so haphazard. The VC “experts” haven’t the foggiest idea of which budding entrepreneurs to select and fund. Those VCs who have made big money were often merely lucky in their winners; they also picked lots of losers.

The payoff for VCs is generally the ability to sell stock in the venture to others, even when there are no profits ever to be made.

Some deals have been referred to as legalized Ponzi schemes.

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