5 Reasons Why Not to Raise Capital For Your Startup - ValueWalk

I recently had dinner with co-founders of a startup who’d just raised quite a bit of money for their company, a deal which incidentally I’d passed on. The meal was fantastic: fresh salmon from the bay, washed down with a particularly good New Zealand pinot noir, while watching the sun go down over the water. Really you’d expect my mood to have been chipper… but it wasn’t.

The evening was spent with the founders congratulating themselves for raising money. I’m not being a killjoy but it felt like the end of the line, not the beginning. It felt like all the preparation had been done, all the work completed, all the sweat, tears and marriage breakups had already been had, and now finally they’d succeeded. Except of course that wasn’t the case. This was the beginning not the end.

All they’d done was raise some money. Money which, though it may be needed to fulfill their goals, stands as a liability. Now, I’m all for celebrating success but this attitude really worries me and here’s why.

VC culture has come to equate raising capital with success, where each successive round of financing successfully completed is denoted as success, but you know what, VC culture is wrong.

Success is success and raising money is raising money. Let’s not confuse the two.

Raising money amounts to taking someone’s hard-earned capital. Capital which has been acquired by sweat, savings, maybe even theft but it’s someone else’s nevertheless. That, folks, is a liability no matter which way you spin it!

Realise that even if the capital never came with strings such as board seats, preferred equity, liquidation preferences or any host of other typical “strings”, realise that capital ALWAYS comes with strings which I’ll get to shortly.

So in the event that you’re an entrepreneur, emboldened by the fact that most anyone in Silicon Valley today sporting a hoodie, some pimples, and professing to work out of his grandmother’s garage, can get funded and at eye-watering valuations, let me give you 5 reasons why raising money may be a bad idea for your business:

1. Lack of Focus

Multi tasking is rarely a great strategy for any business. If you doubt me, try rubbing your belly and patting your head.

37signals built one of the most successful businesses in their niche by remaining extremely focused on just one product. My point is that it’s next to impossible to be running around raising capital, while remaining focused on building your fledgling business.

Unless you’re sitting in Silicon Valley which stands as a distinct anomaly to the rest of the world, let me assure that raising money will likely take you far longer than you ever thought, will come with more distractions than you’ve even thought, and the progress in your business will suffer.

2. ROI Can Be Poor

Time has a cost. The time spent raising money can often be time poorly spent.

I little while ago I was pitched by a company which had developed a minimum viable product, cheap to produce, easily shipped and which when sold, netted a $10,000 profit. The founders were, however, trying to raise $250,000 and had been on a road show for 3 months already!

Consider that by focusing on building, marketing and selling that very product they needed only 25 products sold to reach their $250,000 they had s

via www.valuewalk.com