Some tips for those looking for an investor in their startup

    Recently, there has been much discussion of the problem of finding investors for a startup, I can hardly give universal advice. But there are fundamentally important points that you need to pay attention to when looking for an investor.

    * An unsuccessfully selected investor is worse than none. Having received a share in a startup, the investor automatically begins to influence the strategy of your company. Both the fate of the company, and your fate as its founder, first of all depends on a competently drawn up investment agreement. Wrong choice of investor in conjunction with an illiterate contract can be fatal for a startup.



    * Your interests should coincide with the interests of the investor. Different types of investors have different goals. Very often at first glance an absolutely illogical thing happens. Entrepreneurs turn to venture capital funds with projects that promise a good guaranteed guaranteed profit and do not find investor interest. This is primarily due to the fact that venture capital funds are simply not interested in companies in which you need to invest, say, $ 300,000 and then receive annually $ 1,000,000 in dividends. If the size of the fund, for example, is $ 150M, then it simply cannot afford to manage investments less than, say, $ 1M. Equally important, venture capital funds are usually not interested in long-term stable income in the form of dividends.

    * The sphere of interests of venture capitalists does not include the abstract development of science. Creating and using unique technologies allows you to break away from competitors and makes your idea difficult to reproduce. But in order for a project to become attractive investment, it must first of all be focused on people, on future consumers of your product or service. That is, the main goal of your startup should be to solve some specific problem that really exists in people.

    You can learn more about the basics of investment from my presentation that I made at the Summer School of the Novosibirsk Academpark, it is available at Slideshare.com

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