Finding the Money

(how venture capitalists think)

Many of our clients need to raise funds to support their business plans.  While fund raising is not the business of ITTr we do often encounter situations where we need to interact with funding sources such as venture capitalists. In one recent encounter we learned some important lessons about how they think.

Often the inventors whose inventions we represent need to do additional work to support a sale.  That work could be the manufacture of chemical samples,  the fabrication of prototypes  the preparation of drawings or the writing of special software.  

Securing additional funding to support such activities is often difficult for our clients.  

In our recent discussion wtih the VC we learned something imporant about his motivation.   While its been conventional wisdom to us that VC's only fund projects that are making money and have the potential to earn a lot of it,  there are other things that motivate them.

The VC we spoke to talked about the imporance of Celebrety and Marquee value.   What did he mean by that?

He said that if a Celebrety  in the field was an investor in a project, he would be more likely to invest.  So, for example, if Steve Jobs was to be an investor in a new  invention for Tablet computing, the VC would be likely to invest.

Marque value,  ment to him that if a large corporation was so interested in an invention that they were willing to sign a letter of intent to purchase, again the VC would be likely to invest.

He even remared that in the case where either of the above criteria were met,  he woudn't even need to read the business plan that the entrepreneur had slaved over producing-

So-- If you wnat to raise money for your idea, spend less time on your business plan and more on courting celebrities and buyers with Marque value.

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If you think ITTr might help you , contact us at www.ittrifecta.com