55 Entrepreneurship Part 9: Financing Your Startup

How will you finance your startup? This episode presents some thoughts on the issue of financing for entrepreneurs based on my own experience, including:

• Why bootstrapping your business with revenue finance is the best way to fund your own startup, if you can do it
• The benefit of having some personal savings and no major financial commitments, if you want to start a business
• The role that loans can play in funding your venture and how taking out loans for business is a far better use of debt than taking out loans for consumption items
• Why selling equity in your company (taking investment from VC or others) is ultimately a very expensive way to fund your venture
• Why Business Development Grants are never "free money" and have serious drawbacks
• The importance of looking long and hard at whether you really need the money to get going. You probably don't need nearly as much as you think