Please wait while my tweets load 
Join my mailing list
Enter your email here:
Get the IQ RSS feed.Get new questions and advice on how to raise capital every day to your feedreader of choice!
Link directly to the XML
Startable.com
Feld Thoughts
alarm:clock
Early Stage VC
Reverse Shell Mergers
Guy Kawasaki - Change the World
Jeff Clavier's Software Only
Northeast VC Funding / M&A
AllTop - Venture Capital Feeds
Follow us on Twitter
I have a properly structured PPM. How do I locate investors or find broker dealers to market my offering?
First, for those of you who don’t know, a PPM is a Private Placement Memorandum. This is the stock offering that you give to Angel Investors to buy stock in your company. Also, a PPM is really just for Angel Investors. Though its good to have, VCs don’t use these – they typically supply a Term Sheet.
For more on Term sheets, click here: Term Sheets This is a great presentation by Nisha Atre of Mellon Ventures
Once you have your paper work in place, you then want to show it to some investors. Blanket emailing of investors is not recommended. The email just goes right in the trash. And that goes for regular mailing too – Investors you don’t know are not impressed by you Fedexing them a business plan. That too goes in the trash. It's also a Huge waste of money.
I’ve been to enough of my investor events to know that the best way to reach an investor is by a qualified introduction. This means that someone who knows the investor calls or emails them on your behalf or introduces them to you. Additionally, being at the same place at the same time works very well. For instance, I’ve seen a ton of follow-up meetings come out of our events. There are a lot of good events out there that we don’t run. I guess I’m just partial to mine :) Lastly, there are online services like FundingPost. There are others out there, but theres no need for me to mention them :) At FundingPost, I see an introduction from an Investor to an Entrepreneur on an average of one every single business day. That’s approximately 260 Investor introductions every year!
As for brokers, there are a lot of mixed feelings in the early-stage Investment community about brokers. While they are well received in most industries and even later stage venture and LBOs, early-stage VCs and Angel Investors are not too partial towards them. Unless they are doing a lot of work for you – setting up your paperwork, polishing your pitch, shining your shoes and really putting some organization to your young company---Then introducing you to investors for a percentage, for the most part, the investors just feel like they are a waste of money for the simple introduction. However, if you decide to go the broker route, beware of the high monthly retainer. You are almost better off going to the casino and putting it on 21.
permalink:
Spread the word! Bookmark this question and help other entrepreneurs
del.icio.us Digg Furl Reddit Ask BlinkList blogmarks Google Ma.gnolia RawSugar Rojo Shadows Simpy Socializer Spurl StumbleUpon Tailrank Technorati Wists Yahoo!
Remember, I may not always know the answer, but I always have an opinion.
The answers I give are my opinions only. You should consult a lawyer before doing anything.
Also, this site is free and run by me. There are plenty of great resources at the links below:
© 2005-2008 Joe Rubin