How to get your startup funded

A frequent topic of conversation with founders is, how do I get my startup funded? They may have raised a little bit of money from friends and family. They may have used their savings. And now they're at the point where they need to go out and speak to professional investors. And there's a lot of advice out there on how to do that. A lot of pitch templates. There's a lot of things you need and things you don't need. This, that, and the other. So Plenty of resources to look at, but I typically tend to talk to people about a few simple things. First off, you need to have the team. You need to have 1 or 2 people, maybe 3 or 4, that an investor can look at and saying, I believe that this team will carry through this idea and will make it a success. Even if it's only in a short-term period that they think about that, they will need to look at the people and saying, these guys and girls, these men and women, they're going to be able to do this. That's number one. Number 2, kind of the obvious one, which is a good idea. But what is a good idea? If you look at many of the companies that became very successful later on, the ideas that they started with actually didn't end up becoming the stuff that made them very successful. So while you still need to have a good starting point, you also need to understand that whatever you start with may not be what you finish with. So having a good idea or having something that there's a need for in the market and have proven that there is a need for in the market is important. So how do you prove it? You sell something, right? So can you get any kind of evidence that somebody is willing to pay you something for whatever it is that you're proposing, then you've proven that there is potentially a market here. Not a big one necessarily, not a, not a great one either, but you've proven that somebody's willing to pay for whatever it is that you're proposing. So those are typically the 3 things I talk to founders about when they're looking for funding. Do you have the right people with you that will be seen as investible? Number 2, do you have a product or service that's a good idea and that other people can see as a good idea? And number 3, have you shown that it's actually something that can be sold to somebody who's not a friend or is not family? If you have those 3 things, then putting together a very simple pitch deck. I typically say 10 pages or less. Getting introductions from other founders to investors, having conversations with them, don't necessarily pitch them, but just saying, hey, we're thinking about doing this, we're thinking about doing it in this way, do you mind talking to us about it, is the way to get started on getting funding. Getting investment into your startup is a lot of work. It's a lot of rejection. You know, again, plenty of resources show you that people have been rejected 50, 100, 200 times before somebody invested. So just know that if somebody's not saying yes, they're saying no. They're saying, yeah, we're interested, come back to us later. It's a no. They're saying, well, maybe not, maybe not for me, but maybe for a colleague. Let me see if he's interested. It's a no. Learn to accept that and learn to just move on to the next one and the next one and the next one. And eventually you'll find somebody who either believes in your idea or you'll realize that the idea or the team or the traction that you have is not enough and is not ready to get professional investment. And that's okay too. I hope this was helpful. If I should record videos on anything else around Funding, let me know in the comments and I'd be happy to do so. Thank you.