http://monochromemagazine.net/cause-and-effect-essay-topics-for-middle-school.

By: Malulu Angula

 

When it comes to start-ups many entrepreneurs face a similar stumbling block: funding.

Where do you get it? What does it smell like, and is it really possible that someone out there will think your idea is good enough to throw money behind it?

Maybe, and through this article we’ll guide you on the 3 fastest ways you can get funding for your business (apart from a loan because, yoh. Banks are another story.)

Pitch City

Our first tip for finding financing is to pitch your idea to other successful entrepreneurs who might have the moola to fund your venture.

Going this route isn’t easy as it takes guts to walk up to someone and ask for money, but if your idea is the next big thing, do you really want to miss out on the opportunity?

The trick in pitching to investors is to find entrepreneurs who you know have an interest in the same industry. If you’re into manufacturing local food products, look for entrepreneurs you know have an interest in pushing locally made yum-yums.

After that prepare your pitches. We recommend you have three. An elevator pitch that brilliantly sums up your idea in 30 seconds.

A five minute pitch that goes into a bit more detail on the value your idea can present to potential customers and how you can monetize it.

And finally a ten minute pitch with a PowerPoint presentation that you can quickly whip out when you’re finally invited to meet for a sit down meeting with the aforementioned investors.

Getting the hook-up

This method involves getting hold of some key people and hoping that they can hook you up with the right people.

With this idea you want to be seen (especially by) embassies to be pitching your idea around town. Embassies are always looking for foreign talent that they can pair with partners back home so this could be how you win.

The easiest way to do this is to call your local embassy (start with the French, the Finnish and then the German embassy’s, they seem to have most partnerships with Namibia 😊) and ask to speak to anyone involved in local business partnerships.

These people will hopefully be able to advise you on people to contact, pitch competitions and incubator programmes to apply for and many other goodies that can help you get that step closer to funding.

Crowdfunding

Crowdfunding is exactly what the word describes. Looking out at a crowd and showing them the value in your idea and hoping they throw cash at you to fund it.

Crowdfunding can happen across any network from ‘friends, families and fools’ that live nearby to your Twitter followers from well…everywhere.

A popular method many crowdfunding websites follow is that in exchange for a bit of start-up capital, you offer the investor a little something something of value in exchange.

This can range from making them the first ones to try out your brilliant product once production is finalised or adding their names to the product packaging in a cool and innovative way as a special way of saying thank you. The world is your playground when it comes to possible rewards.

Crowdfunding may sound easy, but it’s not for the faint hearted. It’s a lot of responsibility to keep track of who sent you what and what to do in case you don’t meet your target goal and how to process and account for all of that…shew…maybe crowdfunding is for if there’s a team of you that can help with all that.


There’s just 3 tips on how you can secure that funding for your biz. Got any other ideas on other ways to quickly hit the cash cow to fund your venture, tell us in the comments below, we’d love to hear ‘em.

 

 

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