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Why Your Startup Isn’t Being Funded and What to Do About It
Let’s talk about why investors aren’t returning your calls and what you should do about it
There are a million challenges when starting a business, and one of the earliest is finding the funding to get your business off the ground. I’ve been an entrepreneur for over 20 years, and in the last half of my career, I’ve spent a ton of time helping all kinds of entrepreneurs go from idea to growth to exit. I still get at least one email a week that goes something like this:
“We’ve got this game-changing/billion-dollar/can’t-fail startup. Our problem is investors won’t talk to us. Can you help us make some connections?”
First of all, let me assure you that there’s nothing inherently wrong with that question. You are one of a million entrepreneurs, myself included, facing the same issue. And even when you get out of the idea stage and have made something tangible to sell to customers, you’re likely to get stuck among the vast majority of startups that can’t get traction. Then once you get traction, how the hell are you going to be able to scale?
That said, there might be some very valid reasons why your startup isn’t getting funding:
Mistake No. 1: Using the wrong approach.
When you ask, “Can you help us make some connections?” the answer you’re probably going to get is “No.”
There are a couple reasons for this, and they’re important.
For one thing, that’s not what I do. While I have connections to all sorts of cool and wonderful people, they aren’t the kind I would trade, because I don’t make these connections to be traded.
I’m always happy to make an introduction whenever it makes sense, but it has to make sense. That’s the primary reason I don’t make these kinds of introductions. A blind introduction from an entrepreneur I barely know to an investor I’ve known for 20 years isn’t going to result in anything but the same silence the entrepreneur is getting on their own. And now the investor will be annoyed at me for wasting their time.
I get all sorts of offers for access to my connections — everything from a free beer…
