Capital Raising - Do your homework
Part of the strategy of my company is to raise a capital from VCs (Venture Capital Funds), Incubators or Angels.
Since I believe in "If you fail to plan you plan to fail", I am planning very carefully everything and, in this case, my approach to the fund raising procedure.
On last weeked I worked for 2 days and reviewed all VCs in Israel.
What did I do and what was I looking for?
- Investing strategy: What is their investing strategy? Do they invest in pre-seed, seed, or later stage only? Maybe they are inveting only in well financed companies that wish to expand?
- The Portfolio - Your Niche: It is very important to know in what kind of companies this particular VC has invested in the past. It can learn you things like:
- Does this VC like and understand the niche your startup is working at? When I say like I mean they believe that there is big money in it.
- Are there too many companies like yours, maybe your direct competitors? If there is a direct competitor maybe this VC will not invest in you because you are jeopardizing other VC's portofolio companies.
- The Portfolio - Your Competitors: Are there any competitors to my startup that I don't know about yet?
- How does this VC work: What is the standard process in this VC? What are they looking for?
It was a very intense work but I learned many things from it.
Here are the full complete list of Venture Capital Funds that work in Israel: http://www.science.co.il/Venture-Capital-Funds.asp
and this is the Incubators list: http://www.science.co.il/Technology-Incubators.asp
Hope this helps,
Vladi