Scale up your mind: How the smart startups get venture capital funding

In the first part of this article, we have seen what is venture capital funding and how it works. It is time now to take up how to get venture capital funding, or whether to go for it at all. What does it take for an entrepreneur to get funded, and what are the circumstances in which he may be better off growing his startup organically?

Here are the 10 basic questions an entrepreneur needs to ask himself before going off in a quest for venture capital funding.

1. Do you have a viable, rapid-growth, highly-scalable idea?

Every entrepreneur believes his startup is a winner, and that his business idea is brilliant. But that’s hardly enough. Other people have to see evidence of it to back the idea. Especially VCs. Your pedigree, academic credentials, and even the idea might get you a meeting with potential investors, but not further.

Sumit Jain, co-founder of CommonFloor, one of India’s leading real estate portals, learned it the hard way when he started his entrepreneurial journey. He and his co-founders were engineers from the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Roorkee. “We thought getting venture capital funding will be easy. If we won’t find funding, who will? We pitched to so many VCs but nobody was willing to bet on us then. Finally, we decided to bootstrap and make our business work. In a year’s time, investors were coming to us,” he recalls.

So, if you are comfortable running a small or niche business which you can make profitable, venture capital funding may not be your cup of tea. Bootstrapping with your own savings, or raising money from family and friends, would be a better option. On the other hand, if you have the ambition to launch a high-growth company – and deal with the stress that comes with it – then at some point you will need to go for venture capital financing. The right time for it is when your startup is poised to take off on an accelerated growth path into the big leagues.

2. Does your business suit the venture capital model?

As we have seen in [Part 1 of the article](https://www.techinasia.com/how-to-get-venture-capital-funding-beginners-guide-startups), VCs need big winners. You can run a small, profitable business comfortably, but that doesn’t interest a VC. You should go to a VC only if you have ambitions to scale up your business with big infusions of capital. You should also be prepared to get onto a fast growth track, because your venture capital investors will want to sell their stake and reinvest in new startups.

3. What is the size of the market that your startup is targeting?

Some businesses are just too niche to be fundable. A US$20 million market size may be good enough to run a business, but remember that institutional investors are looking for a rapid scaling up – and for that, a market size in hundreds of millions of dollars is more like it, because if a startup manages to capture even a small share of that market, it will be large enough to give a venture capital fund the quantum of returns it needs for its investors.

4. Deep down, what is your reason for starting up?

Some people start up because they want to be their own boss. Others do it because they like the status of being an entrepreneur. A third kind of startup founder is driven by a passion to disrupt the status quo. Probably in most startup founders you will find shades of all three, but it’s the third characteristic that appeals the most to a VC. They are the ones who will not be satisfied with making a good living from their business; they want to change the world. Some introspection at the very outset can point to the road ahead that is most suitable for you.

See: 5 bootstrapped tech startups that do India proud

5. Are you ready to share control of your startup?

A VC-funded startup will go through several rounds of funding, and the founders will have to part with large chunks of stock in the process. Venture capital funds invest large sums of money, and in order to generate returns on those, they need to own significant percentages of their winning startups. For a founder, this means getting used to the idea that he can’t call all the shots in the quest to make the company grow large. Of course, that doesn’t mean the founder won’t become rich – even a small stake in a high-growth startup can be worth millions.

6. Which venture capital fund is right for you?

A multitude of factors come into play here, but the most important of them relate to the value that a venture capital fund can add to your startup, beyond the capital. The guidance of an experienced venture capitalist can prevent mistakes and turn errors into valuable lessons. They are well-connected with potential customers, investors, and acquirers, which is invaluable to a fledgling startup. Ideally, they should have experience in your field, but at the same time not have another startup in their portfolio that would be your rival. And finally, it’s always best to catch a fund in its initial investment phase, so that there will be more opportunities for follow-up funding.

7. Do you have the boldness and perseverance to cross the dark valley?

“When an entrepreneur succeeds, there is so much glamor and halo attached to them. What is forgotten or undervalued is the walk through the dark valley entrepreneurs go through.” Vani Kola, managing director of Kalaari Capital, shared that with me some time ago, and those words have stayed with me because we see it in so many successful startups we profile at Tech in Asia. Having been an entrepreneur herself, it is that elusive quality of perseverance that Kola the venture capitalist looks for in startup founders. “On the days when things don’t go great, this quality will see the entrepreneur through,” she says.

See: Getting funding: 10 survival strategies for startups

8. Do you have the team and leadership to grow your startup into a viable business?

9. How should you approach a venture capital fund?

And finally, can you get a VC excited about your startup?