Seed Capital raising

Worried about the Series A crunch? Choose not to participate in it and go raise a bigger seed round. Startups are often too worried about dilution, instead of whether they are capitalized enough to dominate their space. Here are  eight key advises to close our seed+ round successfully :

1. It's very hard to raise funds on the side, so staff appropriately : It takes a lot of time and effort to raise venture funding quickly--so staff for it. One has to be very diligent in reaching out, following up, setting up meetings, pitching, requesting intros and answering questions, which simply can't be done well on a part-time basis. 

2. It's a numbers game. Go get meetings, and get lots of them : It is very difficult to know what the right fit will be with early-stage investors and angels, so schedule lots of meetings. Send cold emails to known active investors, leveraged LinkedIn and requested intros from fellow fundraising startups. Investors are too busy (or attention deficit) to cull through massive amounts of detail or rely on vague emails with little teasers.

3. Force an answer from all investors : Many investors avoid saying yes or no. They linger without committing, always saying they will stay in touch. If this didn't move them to an answer, consider 'no'.

4. Leverage momentum to overcome investor hesitation : Many investors prefer to wait a while and monitor progress before writing a check. Leverage each of investors to follow up with our active pipeline. Again, having our tech team focused solely on improving the product was crucial to building the momentum.

5. Focus your message and have a clear plan : Everyone wants to change the world instantly and be the best in all adjacent markets, but believe that one can only do one thing very well at a time. Many investors well respond well to your strategy and appreciate focus.

6. Use convertible Venture Debts : Convertible Venture Debts are much faster, cheaper, and easier to execute than equity rounds since you do not have to worry about negotiating every detail of a term sheet and creating a valuation for something nearly impossible to value. Plus, it keeps your cap table simple. smallB branch of Dena Bank is playing leading role for Innovation and Start-up Finance.

7. Time is money (literally, in this case)--so be responsive, but efficient : Plan would be obsolete by the time the ink dry and it wouldn’t help them understand your business any more than your presentation already did. Created an FAQ document for the common questions so you may quickly paste canned, yet thoughtful, responses into emails. 

8. It's a seed round, not Series A : You don't need all the answers, but you better know what the questions will be. Made sure to have good thoughts on each subject and explained assumptions in addition to your methodology. 

Bottom line, if Series A funding is going to be more difficult to obtain, make sure that you raise enough money now with a seed+ round to give you sufficient time to hit those Series A milestones. While there may be more competition for capital in the future, investors will always write checks for a good business idea that solves a real problem. Get the money in the bank and get back to growing your business--just make sure you don't run out of cash before you have the chance to succeed.