Mom Invented

I have personally been through the process of raising investment, so I am proof positive that it is possible for an inventor and entrepreneur to raise cash, even in today's economic climate. But I’ve also learned first-hand there are many issues to be aware of that tend to be neglected. In fact, I want to share a few insights that took me somewhat by surprise, or at least by varying degrees of surprise along the way--the main one being the amount of time and complexity associated with finding and accepting money from investors.

If you are like me, when you first thought about getting money from an investor, you thought, “If I had X dollars, I could get my product/company to Y. So, I need to find an investor, share this vision, and voila! We will both become wealthy.”

Before you take that leap, though, there are some things you need to realize, in terms both of time and money.

1. Raising capital is nearly a full-time pursuit with finding investors, preparing presentations, delivering presentations, listening to feedback on presentations (often contradictory to the feedback from the prior investor), improving the presentation (it always gets better over time and with feedback), communicating with investors, then juggling and revising the paperwork.
2. If you have children, you need to consider child-care. I flew in the grandparents from one state to babysit while I jetted off to another state to give a presentation. I would estimate that raising my first $500,000 consumed at least twice the amount of time that I spent writing my first two books!

Continue reading the rest of my July Inventions column, "Money Isn't Everything" on Entrepreneur.com for more considerations and tips...

Tagged as: Business Advice, business finance, Entrepreneur.com, finding investors, inventing, raising money, venture capital