DealQuest BEST OF: Financing

This week’s guests feature some of DealQuest’s Best OF Financing experts! They share about everything from finding little known funding sources to minimizing taxes, gaining freedom, and funding your next start-up. Listen in here to get a sample from each of them. In addition, you. can click their name to listen to their full featured episode!

Finding Little Known Funding Sources with Kedma Ough

Kedma Ough of Target Funding is a “small business superhero,” who has worked with over ten thousand entrepreneurs and small business leaders in the last two decades, helping them to attain capital and resources to grow their businesses. Kedma is also the author of Target Funding: A Proven System to Get the Money and Resources You Need to Start or Grow Your Business. She is a fifth-generation entrepreneur and small business funding expert who believes in breaking down barriers and leveling the playing field for small businesses and fellow entrepreneurs.

If you bring to mind the image of a pizza, most people see a single funding source as being the whole pie. However, Kedma notes that you need to look at funding sources as being single pieces, all of which make up the whole thing. You can access so many sources, opportunities, avenues and approaches to filling out your “whole pie” — you don’t need to make one source your make or break solution. Many different funding sources create the foundation for successful funding. 

Kedma’s best advice: Target what funding you need, and use variables unique to yourself to make it happen.

LISTEN HERE for all her tips!

Raising Capital and Avoiding Taxes with Joel Block

A money business insider, Joel Block is a long-time venture capitalist and hedge fund manager (gobbledygook for professional investors) who lives in a Shark Tank world like on TV. Since selling his publishing company to a Fortune 500, Joel keynotes conferences worldwide, delivering business strategies and the inside track for money and success to business executives and their teams.

Now, Joel lives in the world of funding and money! He’s amazing at raising capital, and has great insight on how to make it happen. He advises business owners to consider looking for strategic money. Big companies are looking for alignment with startups and new businesses. Often, they are actively seeking innovation, they want access to fresh new ideas, and they’re often much easier to work with than VC firms. You may get better terms, amazing partnerships, and lifelong advantages if you develop these relationships throughout your business’ life.

Raising capital is an art form. It’s an evolving practice that you continually adapt, and you have to look at it that way. Striking a balance between being investor friendly and promoter friendly is a huge key. If terms are onerous to either side of the deal-making table, things aren’t going to work out well!

Joel’s best advice: Big companies operate, small companies innovate. That’s why partnerships between the two can be so powerful! 

LISTEN HERE for all his tips, including taking advantage of tax breaks!

Entrepreneurial Freedom and Community Building with Niles Heron

Niles Heron has been a part of a number of startups — a few exits, a few exciting failures — and has invested heavily in trying to make paths like the one he took more accessible to the under-represented spaces he came from. He also taught and mentored at incubators and accelerators (TechStars, Gener8tor, Detroit’s TechTown), spoken across the country at events about the value of entrepreneurship and startups to founders and the communities they live in, and is a respected voice in the Detroit Startup ecosystem. In addition, he was honored by Crain’s Detroit Business as a 20 in their 20s award winner in 2015.

Niles notes that helping people make their product actually work is essential. He’s found that entrepreneurs are often raising money to solve the wrong problems within their business. After all, it’s easier to say that marketing, organization, or something else is the problem. However, too often there is a reluctance to reexamine your product and the way it is tailored to your client or customer. He notes that even a Tom Ford suit will look bad if it’s not tailored to fit the wearer. Your product is no different.

You have to be able to get honest with yourself about exactly what it is you need. Capital can certainly help you grow your business, but only when it serves the actual needs within your business. Raising money for the sake of “having” it, or to solve any problem other than the real problem, are never going to lead to entrepreneurial freedom and ultimate success.

Some of Niles best advice: Money isn’t the total solution, and it’s not the only problem. It’s never “just” money.

LISTEN HERE for more of his advice!

Launching & Funding Start Ups with Peter Dolch

Peter Dolch is the President and Co-Founder of Thaumaturgix, Inc. (Tgix) which was twice ranked in the Inc. 500 Fastest Growing Private Companies list. Peter also acts as the Managing Partner at Tgix; the CTO of Biospectal SA (a Swiss-based MedTech Startup); the Managing Partner at AEON Foundry, a NYC-based fund investing in and mentoring early-stage startups; is on the Advisory Board of American Diamond Mint, a new way to buy, sell and trade diamond assets; and is a Science Advisory Board member of DietPower.

There is an advantage of being part of a bigger investor group. Larger groups have the ability to pull money and act as a deal lead, which is powerful. An individual or small fund often has to take whatever terms the lead investor negotiated, rather than set your own terms. However, being part of something larger allows you to be at the table, creating the most desirable possible terms. This lets you be part of even better deals!

Over the last 20 years, the industry has dramatically shifted, for both better and worse. Preferred equity, cap notes, and SAFE options are all options now, but they aren’t created equal. Peter counsels entrepreneurs that what investors tend to really want is preferred equity. If you can create that, you’re much more likely to bring in partners who are invested in your success in a deeper way.

Peter’s best advice: When it comes to bringing on investors and gaining funding, alignment is essential.

LISTEN HERE for more of his advice!

Corey Kupfer is an expert strategist, negotiator and dealmaker. He has more than 35 years of professional deal-making and negotiating experience. Corey is a successful entrepreneur, attorney, consultant, author and professional speaker who is passionate about deal-driven growth. He is also the creator and host of the DealQuest Podcast.

If you want to find out how deal-ready you are, take the Deal-Ready Assessment today!