Why You Shouldn’t Wait To Raise Your Funding…

Coronavirus (Covid-19) has thrown everything for a loop. The fundraising environment and economic environment reminds me of when I was raising money during the Great Recession.

There's a lot uncertainty, just like during the Great Recession. And there's a lot of fear, just like during the Great Recession. In this short video, I'll share with you my advice about how you should proceed with your fundraising.

 

Read the video transcript below:

 

What should you do if you're raising money? Right now we are living in crazy, unprecedented times. The closest thing that I've ever gone through in my career to what we're going through now was during the Great Recession of 2008.

And I was actually raising money during that and it was a surreal time. It seemed like venture capitalists were hiding under their desks, so to speak. You could get meetings but not much else got done for a long period of time.

And it strikes me, as I think about what we're dealing with today with Covid-19 that it is somewhat similar to that period of time, but it's different because of all the quote unquote social distancing that were going on. If you're going to have meetings, they're likely going to be over the phone through like you're going to be using zoom face to face meetings, probably not.

Now the question is what should you do? Should you stop raising money or should you keep going? Well, I would absolutely, positively tell you because this is what I'm telling my clients that are raising money: Keep going. Don't wait.

Here's why, and this goes right to the questions of whether or not we're going into a recession. Yes we likely are, but I'm no economist, but it sure seems that way and when are we going to recover? Who knows?

And that's the key point we don't know. And if you just sit there doing nothing right now and wait and say, "Okay, I'm going to wait" when you're blowing all of this time, that's not a smart thing to do.

So you can use the time to your advantage and here's how. The first thing is working on making your pitch better. So if you get in front of investors, even if they're not ready now, you're paving the way for when they have money, Get them excited about your business, get them interested in it, and then make sure you can answer this key question, which is the logical one.

Are you going to have enough money at the other end of all of this? In other words, how are you going to get through the period of time that we're in now, which might be six months, might be three months, might be a year.

Plan on extending your runway as long as possible because that's what you need to do. And then take advantage of the time. Line up people to hirefor when times get better. That's a super smart thing to do. Then I'm seeing several of my clients do.

If you can pick up assets for a cheap price right now, pick them up or get them ready to be picked up. That's something another one of my clients is doing.

Be smart. Be strategic about what's going on because you can take advantage of this time period. Don't just sit on your hands and be woe is me. And most important, if you have employees, be transparent with your employees about what's going on over.

Communicate with your employees about what's going on and be consistent in your, in your communication with employees about what's going on. And then finally, be the steady hand at the wheel. If you panic, I can guarantee you everybody else on your team is going to be panicking too. So you want to be consistent. If you're consistent, your team will react positively. I'm [email protected]. Have a great, great day.

 

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