Sign up, and you can make all message times appear in your timezone. Sign up
Feb 10, 2016
12:55:01pm
dk4 Walk-on
Expanding a Small Business - Staying Put / Identifying Investors
A friend and I started a small company 4 years ago. The best way I can describe this business is to say it started as a “hobby” business. Meaning, my friend and I each have professional careers outside of this small business…it is a nice distraction. We simply implemented a model and plan we developed with partners, invested some capital and we give the company some attention for a few hours each month. Fortunately, the business has taken off over the past few years and grown to where we are at the cross road of trying to decide whether we want to continue treating the company as a “hobby” or do we want to treat it like a business and grow it. The debate centering on how much time and energy will the business take. We are each comfortable financially and status wise with our primary professions—so we are really on the fence about our next step.

Assuming we decide to grow this business, we are going to seek additional working capital and funding. For those who have been down this road, what are the best avenues you have used to reach investors? We’ve worked with several banks to obtain feedback on loans, capital and lines of credit—so we have a good feel for what we could leverage initially. In turn, we’ve initiated discussions with online groups, Linked In, lending clubs, angel investors and crowd funding. We have also had multiple conversations with our state’s department of finance to ensure we are compliant if we grow or treat our investments as securities. We haven’t acted on anything at this point as we are primarily using our own resources combined with multiple private investments to run the company. Our preference is to continue working with private investors should we grow. We also haven’t pulled the trigger simply because we haven’t made the final decision on keeping things static or growing.

So in summary, unless someone can arrange an appearance for us on “Shark Tank”, how has your company identified investors? We have considered hiring some sales reps focused on finding investors—but we aren’t convinced this will get more traction than us asking around. We are comfortable with our “pitch” and what we have to offer rate and return wise compared to traditional investment opportunities, but we don’t know who to make that pitch to.
Any thoughts? Or does anyone have Mark Cuban’s number
dk4
Previous username
ChocolateReadingMom
Bio page
dk4
Joined
Apr 27, 2005
Last login
Mar 28, 2024
Total posts
1,583 (4 FO)