10 Ways to Launch Your Concept and Raise Money for Your Business

1. Make sure you can show evidence of a team that has experience in your niche. If that’s not you, find some advisors.

2. Define a clear vision and value proposition that will give your concept a unique position within the market

3. Run some marketing campaigns to get people to express interest in your concept, BEFORE anything is built (This is crucial evidence to investors that your concept is what the market wants/needs)

4. Build partnerships (agreements in principle) with people/businesses who can quickly get your concept to the audience you’re targeting.

5. Write a clear business plan that covers how you will launch the business and get your first customers in the short term, and how you will grow it in the long term.

6. Produce financial projections that include a 5-year P&L, balance sheet and cash flow mapping out the business plan in financial terms.

7. Create a 15-20 slide investor pitch that outlines a top-level overview of the concept and a top-level plan. Make sure investors can understand your business in less than 3 minutes.

8. Create a target list of potential investors. Use LinkedIn and Crunchbase for this. Start by looking at investors who have invested in a similar sector/competitor, then broaden your search from there.

9. Reach out to these investors with a tailored message “I notice you invested in x and y, I think you’ll love what we’re doing…” Reach out to 200+ potential investors and keep going until you have 150% to 200% of the required investment committed.

10. Call back interested investors saying that you’ve “more interest than you need, some investors will, unfortunately, miss out on this round. Are you in?”

There you have it, you’ve created FOMO, you’re oversubscribed with interest in your pre-seed round, and you can close on favourable terms.

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