Entries Categorized as 'funding your business'

Zion’s Bank Smart Women Grant

April 29, 2007

This is the first in a series of posts outlining grants available to women business owners.

Zion’s Bank Women’s Financial Group offers a Smart Women Grant.

Applicant must be a female business owner and primary manager of the company’s day to day activities or must be associated with a non-profit organization that directly benefits women.

Grant amount: up to $3000
Open to: Female residents of Utah and Idaho
Available for: small business start-up or expansion
Deadline: June 29, 2007

Priority is given to projects that:

promote empowerment of women

directly benefit low income and/or under-served populationsAccording to a program representative of the bank’s Women’s Financial Group, your proposal should have a solid game plan showing how you will measure performance and results.For additional information and an application, visit their website http://zionbank.com/swsm_grant.jspor contact :

Kate Bradshaw on 801.844.7933 kate.bradshaw@zionbank.com

Also, check here for the archive of funding sources listed on this blog to date.

Email this • Stumble It! (1 Reviews) • Discuss on Newsvine • Digg This! (2 Diggs) • Add to del.icio.us • Save to del.icio.us • Vote at Netscape. 1 vote, no comments. • Sphere: Related Content

“Free” government grants to start a business ?

April 29, 2007

by: Amanda M. Gladden

Most of us in the United States have seen the infomercials or received emails claiming to have information about “free” government grants available to start a business.

If use of the word “free” in the same sentence with “grant” does not clue you in that this is a scam, then please know that the U.S. Federal Government does not offer grants of this sort to individuals.

There are, however, many other sources of free money available to new and established small business owners. Over the next several weeks, I’ll list information about some of these programs here on the blog. Stay tuned.

Email this • Discuss on Newsvine • Digg This! (2 Diggs) • Add to del.icio.us • Save to del.icio.us • Submit To Netscape • Sphere: Related Content

Business Start-up Funding Requires a Silver Bullet

April 14, 2007

Business Start Up Funding

Startup companies often get frustrated when they can’t find investors willing to fund their new idea. What they don’t realize is that in order to get an investment, they need more than just a good idea and the promise of future profits. What investors are looking for is a “silver bullet” in the business that ensures their small investment will yield a huge return.

You Need a Silver Bullet

The silver bullet is the aspect of your business plan that proves your company can grow quickly. For example, perhaps you’ve proven that 100 customers are willing to pay $99 for your newly developed product. If all you need is additional cash to build 1,000 more items to sell more at that price, you’ve got a silver bullet.

Investors are compelled to make investments in startup companies that have proven some aspect of their business model “works” and that what they really need is more capital to make it work better, or to sell more products.

Many entrepreneurs, on the other hand, wander around in search of business start up funding to find the silver bullet in their business plan and that’s a less attractive proposition. In this case you’re asking an investor to put money into a treasure hunt, and not into a business. Until you demonstrate you can sell something (at a profit), you don’t have a business worthy of investment. Therefore you need to re-focus your efforts on finding your silver bullet.

Investors Love Paying Customers

Every business model is different, and as a consequence the silver bullet of one business may look somewhat different than another. The common thread, however, is that each of them show your investors you have found a facet of your business that works well and simply needs business start up funding to be exploited.

A great place to start is with paying customers. Even a few customers create proof that that there is an active buying market for your product that could be even bigger if you had the capital to reach more of them.

Notice that here you’re not telling an investor, “if we build it they (customers) will come”. What you want to say here is “we built it, and they already came”. This puts you in a much stronger position to suggest that if you are capable of repeating the process provided you have more business start up funding.

Understanding Conversion Works, Too

Maybe you don’t have a 10,000 paying customers but have found, on a more modest scale, that for every $1 you spend in marketing you can earn $2 back. This information is a silver bullet too. In this case you’ve proven that you understand how to acquire a customer for less than they are spending, which is a big deal.

This may seem like an obvious necessity for any successful business (let alone one looking for business start up funding), but there are plenty of companies that overlook this point. If you haven’t proven that you can profitably acquire a customer, perhaps this is a good place to start.

Analyze the costs involved in acquiring your first batch of customers and try to project this cost out to the next round of new customers and the round after that. Try for those next customers and see if your results match up with your predictions. Once you feel comfortable that you understand your cost to acquire customers you can begin identifying specific capital needs to accelerate that process.

Speed Things Up

Speeding up time can also be good reason to ask for business start up funding. If you find that it takes you two months to service a customer now, but with additional capital you could service a customer in two weeks (and therefore earn revenue in a shorter time) you’ve found another silver bullet.

Investors are always hungry for businesses that could be even more profitably or grow faster if just a little more capital was applied. Creating a strong case for this use of capital will make it easy for investors to understand your needs.

Read, Aim, Fire!

Perhaps you only have one of these silver bullets ready to present to investors. That’s fine, as long as you have prepared a strong argument for why this one single factor will have such a great influence in your growth.

Presenting your case to investors isn’t about coming up with as many reasons for investment as possible. It’s not about quantity, it’s about quality. What you want to demonstrate is that you have key factors in your business that have a demonstrated track record for growth, but need capital to accelerate that growth.

If you’re in the process of raising business start up funding right now, step back and take a second look at your PowerPoint presentation. Does it clearly articulate the fact that you know how this investment is going to ramp up the value of your startup? If not, try taking another pass with the focus on finding your silver bullet. That’s the type of ammunition your investors are really looking for.

About The Author

Wil Schroter is the Founder and CEO of the Go BIG Network, the largest network of startup companies and entrepreneurs. He is also the author of the new book “Go BIG or Go HOME”, download it for FREE at http://www.GoBIGnetwork.com