The Web offers entrepreneurs new opportunities for raising finance, publishing their needs to a wide audience. New sites coming on line all the time. Care is needed not to list your business on 'scammy' sites, but the surprising thing about entrepreneurship, is the serendipity of it. By casting your net wide you may catch some interesting fish. Of course you will plan, formally or even on the back of an envelope, but by putting your ideas out there on the Net, you may have some welcome surprises. Before checking out financing, though, be sure about just how little money you really need for the startup and figure how best to plan. A visit to Savvy Business Planning would help.
A recently launched example of a Web-based means of presenting your business plan is vator.tv, as in 'elevator pitch', a professional network for ideas and finding finance and other opportunities, through video. Vator asks, "What's your pitch?" and then invites you to make a three minute video. It was created by Bambi Francisco, ex Dow Jones MarketWatch and is backed by angel investors with PayPal, MySpace and Google pedigrees. It went live in June 2007.
Another example is Raise Capital - an online community, where entrepreneurs can showcase their business ideas and capital needs to investors. They have three levels of posting possible from $29.95 a month with just text to $49.95, if you want streamed video as well. The investors are not named, but they will contact you if they are interested. A couple of months trial would not break the bank.
Social networking buzz is high right now, but have you thought of using that route for raising finance? The Go Big Network is one place to try. It is an on-line marketplace that connects the startup and small business community and allows startup companies, investors, advisers, job seekers and service providers to post requests for help on-line and have those requests routed to other members of the Network who can help them.
Yet another potential funding source, is the Lending Club - a social networking venue which opened to Facebook users in May this year and closed its first loan in early June. It is an online lending community where people borrow and lend money, bypass the banks and get better rates. It can be used for startups as well as personal loans. It is one of the new, quickly growing breed of Person-to-Person (P2P) financial operations. For a fuller description and listing, see the article on Person-to-Person Business Finance at work.com.
you have to pay for raisecapital and gobignetwork while vator.tv is free!
best ranjid
Posted by: ranjid | October 16, 2007 at 03:56 AM
Ranjid - these are but a few of the pitching opportunities on the Web. Here are some others worth looking at: (i) Fast Pitch (http://www.fastpitchnetworking.com) - here you can create a profile for free, adding other services as you wish; (ii) Daily Camera (http://www4.dailycamera.com/index.cfm/submit/business) is a place where you can submit a 15-second pitch; (iii) Business Plan Posting (http://www.businessplanposting.com) where you can post a one page BP snapshot for free. There are others and there will be more and more...
Posted by: William Keyser | October 16, 2007 at 11:14 AM