Raising Money From Venture Capitalists

Because many of my friends and clients are entrepreneurs, I am often asked, “How do you go about raising money?” Our early funding was entirely government grants that we received in exchange for bringing jobs to the rural communities. When my business partner and I needed to do additional fund raising, we decided to go to the public markets and list on NASDAQ. In doing that we avoided the very challenging effort of going to the VC communitiy.

We went on the road with very skilled fundraisers who did it for a living. We were not left up to our own devices, which may or may not have been a good thing. Today, when asked about how to raise money, I often direct people to David Rose’s presentation at TED.