Mike Will Downey

Investors are smart people. They are constantly looking for good investment opportunities. The best way to get the attention of investors is to come up with a really good, disruptive idea. Document it well, develop compelling strategies for taking it to market, and build a top quality management team with a blend of entrepreneurial enthusiasm and past success - all managed by a high-quality CEO with a track record of previous success. Investors are risk-aware, so you need to do everything you can to reduce the risk of your proposition. Prove the concept, develop your product, make a few sales. Create a happy pill for a survey contract for a few happy customers. The farther you can take the company without capital, while reducing risk and creating value, the better your chances of raising equity capital and the higher your evaluation is likely to be. Think like a Venture Capitalist, you must get inside their head and understand the frequent stumbles and pitfalls in business plans ...

Entrepreneurship is essential to business today. Successful entrepreneurs exhibit key elements, disruptive ideas, and creativity. This can be tapped into with focus. Successful entrepreneurs solve a compelling problem; they come up with a way of doing something that does not presently exist. They might solve a problem that has never been solved before. Or they might come up with a better solution than existed before. But “better” can’t mean “just a little bit better.” It has to mean “enough better to compel customers to buy the product.” The most successful entrepreneurs have a protected idea. They have an idea that cannot easily be copied by their competition. This might mean the idea is covered by patents. Sometimes it means that portions of the process are trade secrets and cannot easily be reinvented or reverse engineered. One way, or another, the company should have a sustainable “unfair competitive advantage.” Successful entrepreneurs have a product or service that customers will...

Investment Capital can seem like this elusive pie in the sky unless you come from a wealthy family, or have past success. On the contrary though, it's not that difficult to find, all you have to do is focus your efforts. First off you have to get your pitch down to a science. Many pitches fail because they answer the wrong questions. The right questions depend on the stage of your business - some are getting started with an idea, others have a lot of revenue already. Focus your pitch on the key questions for your stage of business. Most pitches don't answer the question that is being asked of investors, which is what is the investment and what's the return? You need to think like an investor. Not all investors think alike, but the hurdles are well known within the investment world. Investors want to know what their return divided by investment could potentially be. Risk is all around. You need to solve an important problem, be unique, have a sustainable competitive adva...