Naturally, one entrepreneur’s experience of fundraising will be different from another’s. A timeline is impossible to predict owing to the multitude of factors that can affect its course.
That said, it is possible, and indeed useful to trace a general outline of what happens over the course of a fundraise from start to finish. This is a helpful undertaking as it will help you to understand the process more clearly and accordingly allow for more forethought and pre-planning.
Step 1 - Get Ready to Raise:
We recommend that entrepreneurs, especially those with less experience of fundraising, take a quick look at our Pre-Funding course. This will give you an idea of where to raise funds, why and how much, as well as giving advice on useful things to have in place before you begin. The more prepared you are, the smoother the journey is likely to be.
"Success depends upon previous preparation, and without such preparation there is sure to be failure."
Step 2 – Write a Business Proposal:
Once you are happy that you are ready to start the process, then it’s time to submit a proposal to whichever funding platform you have elected to use. For ease’s sake, I’m going to describe the process for a user on Angel Investment Network (though if you’re using another network that’s worth its salt then it should be much the same experience).
At first, writing a proposal can seem a daunting task, but it doesn’t have to be, and our template makes the process as frictionless as possible and helps you put across the essential information that will attract investors’ attention. Plus we’ve written a walkthrough ebook to guide you through step by step…
Step 3 – Set to Live:
When you’re happy with your proposal, click ‘Publish’. This will send it to be approved. Provided you’ve submitted the essential details your proposal will then be approved onto the site to be viewed by investors.
Step 4 – Await interest plus update:
If you’ve done a good job following our advice to write your proposal, it shouldn’t be long before you get some interest from investors. You’ll get an internal message in your account from an investor who wants to connect; and we’ll also send a note to your email address so you don’t miss it.
You should keep updating your proposal with any new information about your business throughout the duration of your listing.
Step 5 – Discuss with/present to interested parties:
Once an investor has contacted you and you have replied to them, you will be free to email, meet and discuss your business. We’ve got lots of resources to help you have the right documents to show investors; and if they want to be presented to, we can help with that too (check out our Pitch Deck guide here).
Step 6 – Decide:
Hopefully after a few meetings and discussions you will be offered some funding. If you’re lucky, you’ll get a number of offers. You can accept all or none of them. You just have to decide what’s right for your business at this stage.
Step 7 – Close the deal:
Once you’ve made up your mind, send out a terms sheet, close the deal and start putting those hard-earned funds to good use.