Almost every day we meet other entrepreneurs, some of which are looking for funding.  While we currently are not, we still go out of our way to have things in order should we need to go down that path.  At a time where VC and Angel funding are on the decline and some VC firms are struggling to find funding themselves, I thought I’d muse over what it would be like if the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) was turned into a VC fund. 

The Preparation (For the “unproven” entrepreneur)
Instead having to go through the “hassle” of:

• Knowing the market you’re getting into,
• Busting tail nights and weekends of your own time to build your product or service on your own dime and at the expense of your family and social life,
• Proving if a need or value to your product or service exists,
• Understanding how much people would be willing to pay for it,
• Having an intelligent thought process behind how and when your company will be profitable,
• Thoroughly knowing your burn rate and proving that you’ll keep it as low as possible,
• Proving that you’ve got a quality team because you don’t have the money to continually screw up or carry dead weight, and
• Having a deep understanding of who your competition is/will be and how you will differentiate yourself and be successful against them; 

All you have to do is figure out what suit to wear and memorize “Without us, the whole economy will fail.” 

The Presentation(s) (Multiple in the real world, One for TARP)
Instead going through a presentation:

• That (per the people you’re trying to get to invest) needs to be descriptive but succinct, qualitative but to the point,
• Knowing that you may have to start over a few times as people come in late,
• Being hammered with questions by people that know what they’re talking about (if you’ve done your research and selected firms that know you’re area and can help you out with expertise and connections as well as money) that try to poke wholes in your plans for which you have to have a solid answer for right there, 
• Addressing multiple what-ifs, and
• Keeps you on your toes for the whole time you’re there knowing that the most you should probably hope for is a follow up call to share more info; 

All you have to do is give a high level description of your “plan”, suggest that you’re going to hire a ton of people up front who’s jobs, and hence the economy, depend on this money and then kick back and zone out while you take thirty minutes of verbal abuse from people that don’t know what they’re talking about.  

How awesome would that be? Millions of dollars for less then an hour of listening to people on a soap box! 

The Follow Through
So now that you’ve got the funding, instead of:

• Busting your tail even more because others have trusted you with their money
• Learning as much as you can as fast as you can from your new advisors
• Working with your investors to take advantage of their network and making damn sure you represent them and your company well as they’ve tied their reputations to you
• Executing your plan while trying to make as few mistakes as possible
• Hiring quality people that fit with your team only when you’ve needed someone in that role for a month already and not because you think you should have a Director of Business Development because other companies do even though your product isn’t ready yet
• Making sure you have a good story to tell at your board meeting every six weeks and showing that you’re meeting your commitments  

All you have to do is give yourself a bonus for getting that funding, think about what you’re actually going to do, and have a few meetings to try and get something going until you need to go back and ask for more money. 

That’s a good dream.  OK, now back to the real world and busting tail.

In reading my daily dose of knowledge from my favorite blogs, I came across a posting by Brad Feld in his Ask the VC blog announcing a new website called LearnVC.  The site was created by  Jeff and Andrew Boardman and combines their own posts along with great posts from other sites with the goal of helping people understand VC.  They even break the content out into different guides:

• New Entrepreneurs
• Experienced Entrepreneurs (refresher)
• Future Investors (Angels or Venture Capitalists)
• Students (Venture Capital Investment Competition participants and others

The topic of funding comes up a lot when we’re at networking events with other entrepreneurs and there’s definitely a need for more educational options besides trial-by-pitch.  I’m looking forward to reading it over the next few nights and keeping up with it as it grows.