Business Angels
Every business needs money, and most start-ups will be funded by the business owners and maybe family and friends. What happens if this is not enough and you require additional funding to boost production or launch a first product?
This is where business angels can help. A business angel is normally a high net-worth individual looking to invest from around £10,000 to £500,000 in young and exciting businesses. Of course they are looking for a return against their investment and will undoubtedly want a percentage of your business – sometime significant.
The benefit of a good business angel is that they are able to offer advice and guidance for inexperienced business owners, and will often want to take a seat on the board to help steer the business.
Business angels are ideal for those businesses that have out grown local funding but are not big enough to attract the attention of the venture capital community, who often have minimum investments of around £1 million.
Of course to win investment from a business angel you will need to have a clear business plan, be thoroughly on top of your finances and, most importantly, have a product or service that will deliver the returns an angel is after. Fail in any one of these and you will end up looking daft, but presenting a clear plan to these rules will make you an attractive investment. I work closely with a couple of investment companies and we receive hundreds of business plans each year. Very few make the grade as they are poorly thought out.
We at the Business IT Guide are, of course, focused on helping our users gain business benefit from Information Technology. Core to gaining funding from a business angel is a great business plan, and to assist you with this we have a guide that covers the ins and outs of business planning here:
• Creating a Business Plan
Good luck in your planning and we hope the guide is able to help you build a successful business.
