How to Find Investors for your Startup Business
On Saturday, 23 October 2021, IFGF held IFGF Masterclass titled “How to Find Investors For Your Startup Business” through Zoom. The speaker for this Masterclass was Gregory W. Slayton, who is a former US Ambassador for Bermuda, former board member for Google, managing director of Slayton Capital, visiting professor at Harvard, Stanford, Peking University and the founder of Family First Global. For your information, IFGF Masterclass is a routine event held in the fourth week of each month. Kenneth Kristanto hosted this recent Masterclass and Tommy Simamora assisted as the interpreter. 110 people from 7 countries and 30 cities around the world attended this virtual event.
Before diving into the core talk, Gregory asked whether the participants have had mentors in life. As Christians, we often think that mentorship is related to spiritual life. However, the truth is, in business we also need mentors who can help us to learn and make decisions.
Prior to the “How to”, Gregory stated some alternatives for funding your business:
- Bootstrap
- Self-finance
- Friends and family
- Angel financing
- Find partners to share the risk
- Don’t start a business, buy a business
- Private equity
Then, if you decide to start a partnership, the 3 main things to pay attention to are:
- Identify you partner’s business correctly
- Understand how they work and what their needs are
- Find out how can you serve them in a major way
After determining these factors, take a look back at your business and try to evaluate the condition of it. Answering these 3 questions would help you in evaluating your business:
- Growth potential?
- Future risk potential?
- Future capital potential?
As Shakespeare said once to businessmen, “Know thyself, Know thy Business, Know Thy Industry”.
During this talk, Gregory also emphasized the importance of family as family is far more than the startup business we are working on. Our business will never replace the time we lose with our family while finding an investor. We need God’s wisdom to manage our time well and to find the right mentor for our business. God’s wisdom is also required in finding a business partner with integrity.
We hope this IFGF Masterclass has helped the participants to understand more of the “how to” in finding the right investors for their businesses.
The Lord detests dishonest scales, but accurate weights find favor with him.
-Proverb 11:1-
Next: GREY’S ANATOMY
