The many ways to finance a Startup

I once pitched a venture capitalist a new startup, and the meeting went very well. The next day, I got an email from him saying that his VC firm was definitely interested but that, just as a formality, he’d like me to meet with one of the firm’s other partners. 

I walked into the second meeting fully expecting it to go as well as the first, but this partner hated everything in my presentation. He was skeptical of every slide, questioned my business model, and poked holes in my economic model. I was crestfallen but did my best to answer his questions and defend my thinking.  

At the end of the meeting, he stood up, shook my hand, and said, “Great! We’re looking forward to investing.” It was the basic “good cop/bad cop” routine, and apparently I’d passed the test. A term sheet was issued, and I was the proud founder of a venture-funded startup. 

While I was very excited that day, venture capital may not have been the best way to finance that particular startup. We raised more than we really needed, spent all of it and two years later we needed to raise more money in a very difficult environment, on very difficult terms. When we finally sold the company, after all the liquidation preferences and dilution from the two rounds of venture capital, my final distribution check after five years of hard work was $84.75.  That’s right – eighty-four dollars and seventy-five cents. 

But there are many ways to finance a startup.

When people think of startup financing, they immediately think of venture capital, but in fact there are many great ways to finance your new startup. My goal with this chapter is to open up the solution set a bit in your mind so you can choose the form of financing that makes sense for your particular venture.

I’m always amazed when new entrepreneurs tell me that their biggest hurdle is finding financing for their startup. In my own startup career, raising money has been the relatively easy part; the hard part is actually building a successful business.

Honestly, I think the startup world is too obsessed with venture capital, as if it’s the only way to finance and grow a startup venture. Too many wannabe entrepreneurs sit around fantasizing about the day they meet a VC who bestows upon them a wheelbarrow full of cash. Meanwhile, others just go out and build great businesses. In fact, ninety-nine percent of the world’s successful businesses have never raised a single penny of venture capital.

Here’s a rundown of just some of the many different sources and structures of capital you could consider for financing your awesome new startup:

Bootstrap It, Baby

The absolute best way to finance a startup, of course, is to simply grow it out of profits. This is the way most businesses have been built. Want a Silicon Valley example? See the Farmgirl Flowers case study in Chapter 7! Another remarkable example is Mailchimp, which never raised any outside capital. The founders worked very hard on bootstrapping the company and then sold it to Inuit for twelve billion dollars. GitHub, the cloud-based platform that serves nearly every software developer in the world today, bootstrapped for the first four years, growing strictly from profits and is now worth several billion dollars. Bootstrapping remains the absolutely best way for any entrepreneur to build a company.

Rich Uncle Bob

Many entrepreneurs have gotten their ventures off the ground with friends-and-family money. Borrowing from relatives has its pros and cons, of course (if you lose your mother-in-law’s money, she’ll never let you forget it), but if someone in your family has the capacity to help and believes in you, this is a very common way to raise initial funding. 

Structure: Can be anything you agree upon; a simple promissory note can be family-friendly

Bank Loan

Walk down to your friendly bank and ask the manager for a loan to get your startup off the ground. You’ll get a reasonable interest rate, and you won’t give away any equity. The downside is that you will almost certainly need to personally guarantee the loan (e.g., pledging your house), which can be a difficult conversation with your spouse. The amount you can borrow may be limited by your credit and personal assets. 

Structure: Typically either fixed-term or revolving debt

Venture Capital

Take a stroll down Sand Hill Road, hoping to show someone your pretty pitch deck! The purpose of venture capital is to allow companies to grow at an unnatural velocity in return for a large chunk of equity. Outcomes with a venture-financed business tend to be binary—home runs or strikeouts (e.g., IPO or bankruptcy). See the more lengthy discussion of venture capital starting on page 136.

Structure: Preferred equity.

Angel Investors

While VC investors draw from funds of other people’s money, angel investors are individuals investing their own money. This gives them more flexibility and the ability to make gut-level investment decisions (which early-stage investing usually is). 

Structure: Typically either convertible notes or simple agreements for future equity (SAFEs), both of which end up eventually as preferred equity. See glossary. 

Corporate Venture Capital

Many large corporations have corporate VC funds from which they make investments in startups that may have strategic value to the corporation. This fund is often allocated off of the business’s balance sheet, rather than as a standalone VC fund, causing CVCs to ebb and flow with the macromarkets and making them more or less active, accordingly. Many also look for a partnership to first be in place between the company and the startup or need it in conjunction with the financing in order to justify the strategic investment. Depending on the investment terms (e.g., customer exclusivity clauses), conflicts may arise in working with other customers deemed competitive, potentially limiting the growth of the startup. However, due to the strategic nature of the investment, CVCs tend to be more valuation-insensitive and flexible on the investment amount, since they are usually following other VCs rather than leading rounds and setting terms. 

Structure: Preferred equity but typically open to different investment vehicles since they are following rather than leading rounds (in most cases).

Crowdfunding

Sites such as Kickstarter and Indiegogo primarily focus on creative projects (music, film, technology, art, design, etc.), not startup businesses, per se, because selling debt or equity gets into highly regulated territory. But product pre-sales on these platforms can be a great way to launch a startup. If you get ten thousand people to pledge to pre-purchase your product for one hundred dollars, boom! You’ve raised a million dollars and also proven market demand for your product! Meanwhile, sites such as AngelList can connect you with angel investors, and sites such as NextSeed provide platforms for entrepreneur fundraising,

Structure: Wide range, from term notes or revenue sharing notes to preferred equity.

Equity-Based Accelerators

The most famous startup accelerator is Y Combinator, which offers a cashinvestment in return for around seven-percent equity in your startup. There are many of these startup accelerators now, including several that are sector-specific. Alchemist is exclusively for enterprise-focused startups, and Miller Center is exclusively for social entrepreneurs (and does not take equity), for example. Not all come with cash funding, but all promise to accelerate your startup progress and introduce you to investors. A good list of accelerators can be found on AngelList. 

Structure: A very wide range, including SAFEs, an investment structure developed by Y Combinator.

Revenue-Share Financing

I’ve seen several financing deals structured such that the startup pays a percentage of revenue to the investor, capped at a certain level. I recently participated in one as an investor, where I’ll be paid five percent of the company’s revenue until I’ve received 1.5 times my investment, and then the agreement terminates. This is especially well-suited to seasonal ventures, since the payments are aligned with revenue every quarter.

Structure: A promissory note where the payment is defined as variable, based on revenue. 

Credit Cards

Don’t do it. There is mythology about entrepreneurs who have launched a business by maxing out their credit cards and then gone on to be billionaires. It’s pure bullshit. This approach will yield a 99.9-percent failure rate.

Customer Financing

Find a customer who wants your product so much they’ll help finance your startup! Many software startups have financed themselves by by finding a corporate customer to pay for custom-developed software implementation (which the startup then retains rights to productize and sell to others). In the defense industry, many startups have built an early prototype and then convinced the Department of Defense to provide the funding to develop it further. This will look different for different sectors, of course, but customer financing is a tried-and-true way to launch and grow a startup. 

Structure: A statement of work and a purchase order, with IP rights clearly defined.

Vendor Financing

I once started a business that needed some expensive capital equipment in order to get off the ground. I was stuck on how I was going to finance that until I met with the equipment vendors and realized they would finance it for me in order to get a new customer. It dramatically reduced my startup capital needs. 

Structure: Variable.

Venture Debt

Almost all venture capital is structured as equity, but there is a category called “venture debt” offered by certain banks and speciality finance firms. It is typically used alongside a venture capital equity round, with the venture debt component used to purchase capital equipment, for example. 

Structure: Like a bank loan but with warrants added in to compensate the lender for the higher risk.

Impact Funds

Are you starting up a social enterprise that will save the world? Great news—there are funds to pitch for that! Until a few years ago, social enterprises were difficult to finance—they weren’t “nonprofit enough” for grant capital from foundations, but they were “for-profit enough” for venture capital. A whole new asset class has since appeared: impact capital, which typically comes from impact funds that have been put together partly for social impact in a particular sector and partly to provide an economic return on capital. Examples include New Schools Venture Fund (for startups working in the education sector) and Acumen (focused on global poverty). 

Structure: Wide variety

Social Impact Bonds

These are increasingly being used to finance social ventures. Despite the name, they aren’t really a bond in the traditional sense. It’s more of a pay-for-performance agreement. Let’s say your startup has an innovative way to address homelessness in a particular city, and you’ll need a million dollars to run the the program. You draw up a social impact bond in which perhaps a private investor puts up the million dollars and the city agrees to pay down the bond by $250,000 for each X-percent reduction in homelessness achieved, capped at a million dollars. If all goes well, the city is happy that the homelessness rate was reduced, the investor is pleased to have made a difference and also got their capital returned, and your social venture ended up with a million dollars. 

SBA Loans

The US Small Business Administration can help you finance your business. They don’t make the loans themselves but instead guarantee bank loans. The idea is that banks can make startup loans riskier than they would normally issue, and the SBA is helping US businesses to grow, succeed, and create jobs. Use their Lender Match tool to find SBA-approved lenders.

Non-Bank Business Lenders

Traditional banks are highly regulated, so they tend to not have much flexibility in their credit underwriting. Meanwhile, there are some new sources of business loans, including Kabbage, a non-bank lender that uses a variety of factors (including social media activity) in their credit decisions. Sites such as Fundera allow you to fill out one loan application, and then they shop around for deals among a variety of business funding sources. Peer-to-peer marketplaces such as LendingClub offer business loans up to five hundred thousand dollars from non-bank sources.

Alternative Growth Capital

There is a growing awareness that neither traditional venture capital nor traditional bank lending is well-suited to many online businesses today. A relatively new entrant, Clearco, addresses this with revenue-share financing specifically to fund the growth of businesses with a positive CAC:LTV ratios. They deploy up to ten million dollars in capital in return for a revenue share capped at the capital infused plus six percent. I think we will see many more of these alternatives to venture capital emerge.

Here’s the point: There are a lot of great ways to finance a startup venture today – more than ever before in history.  It’s not just venture capital, so expand the solution set in your mind, and consider all the options. Venture Capital was a great fit for companies like Uber and Airbnb that needed to scale massively at an unnatural pace, with a billion-dollar IPO at the end. 

For other kinds of startups, a different approach may be better. Ultimately what matters is alignment of incentives between investors, founders, and employees. The following pages will hopefully help you in making the right choice for your venture.