If you are considering raising money for your business through Crowd for Angels, or indeed through any other method, you will be offering an interest in your business to experienced investors. As such, they will expect a high level of detail on your company before they are prepared to give you their money.
Here are some top tips to guide you through the funding application process, helping your company to create a pitch which is well suited to attract the investment you need.
Get your facts right and ready from the start
When raising money on Crowd for Angels we expect you to provide basic information about your business, such as its name and company number, as well as information about the directors and the nature and history of the business. Once you have provided us with this information we will perform checks against a number of data sources including Companies House, DueDil, the Law Pages and others. Your information must match these sources, so make sure everything you give us is accurate and up to date.
We will also carry out checks on the directors of the company to verify identity, credit worthiness and shareholdings. At this stage we will search for red flags and suspicious activities, such as dissolved or bankrupted companies in the director’s background. It is important that directors are honest when applying for capital, as information found out during our checks could negatively impact your application. In the later stages of your application we will require evidence for every claim and statistic you use anywhere in your pitch, so be prepared to prove what you say.
Be realistic about your valuation
One of the most difficult elements of a crowdfunding campaign, but one of the most critical for entrepreneurs, is what valuation to put on your company. Many businesses value themselves too highly when they look to raise money and this is likely to put off investors from parting with their cash. While valuing your business is not an exact science, we will inform you and may encourage you to lower your valuation if we think it is too high.
If you have no experience in valuations then you might like to take external professional advice or consider some common methods, such as basing your value on a multiple of future forecast profits. For example, if you expect to make a profit of £200,000 next year, a multiple of 5 times would value your business at £1 million. Take a look at recent deals in your industry to get an idea of what kind of multiples investors are willing to pay.
Itemise your funding needs
If investors are going to invest in your business, either by way of shares or bonds, they will want to know what you are going to spend it on and how it will benefit your company. So it is advantageous if you describe in detail how you will use your funds. For example, instead of vaguely saying you will spend half of the money on working capital, instead you could say you will spend £20,000 on stock, £20,000 on marketing and £20,000 on staff costs. You could go into even greater detail, for example saying your marketing efforts will be focussed online and in local newspapers, with the aim of attracting x sales leads.
For more information on our fundraising application procedure and raising money download our free guide by CLICKING HERE
