I've gone through tons of material. Gone through YC Startup School a while back. Applied to YC and didn't get in. Several times. So, this isn't a low effort "how do I do this?" post.
In the meantime, we developed a product (hardware and software), found a customer and sold a $175K system. This is for commercial/industrial applications.
We also have related patents in process.
I need to raise $3MM to $5MM.
I don't really have a network. I've been to a couple investor conferences, made good contacts and have a couple of evaluation meetings scheduled. That's all good news.
I've had to stop all engineering work to focus 100% on raising capital. We are ready to go. This needs funding. If we can secure it by year-end, we'll have 15 to 30 SKU's ready to launch a solid sales process and book deals.
The nature of my question is about the most efficient way to raise capital so that we can get back to developing products.
I've been using LinkedIn to identify VC's and attempt to contact them. I always research their investment interests, etc. In other words, I don't contact people who only care about FinTech with an industrial product pitch.
The LinkedIn thing is not a very productive use of time at all. Most people don't even respond. I found one guy who had a link to intro.co to pay him $600 to talk to him for 30 minutes. If I knew it was productive I would not have a problem. It doesn't feel right.
Right now I am considering three services:
- Crunchbase
- Pitchbook
- FounderSuite
What I think I need (open to someone telling me I am doing it wrong) are qualified investor contacts. I have no problem cold calling/emailing anyone. I do realize that isn't ideal, yet, again, I don't have the network for warm intros yet. I'll do the hard work. No problem.
Are these services good options? I would be particularly interested in hearing from anyone who has navigated this path and used these services or taken other approaches.
I think we are past the YC phase in that a $500K investment would not move the needle for what we need to accomplish next year. This isn't a start-from-nothing situation at all, we are ready to press hard on the accelerator and go. We just need the right kind of funding.
Before anyone says, bootstrap it in your garage. We are well past that. That has been done. We setup a full industrial class factory in the garage and even took over the entire house for production assembly to ship product at the required scale. Given the nature of the systems, this isn't sustainable. We are at the "throw fuel on the fire" stage.
Thanks.
