John Dimmer's Class Talk

John Dimmer discussed a lot about raising capital for a business.  He started with different phases from concept and start-up through mezzanine and exit.  John himself is an angel investor, so he had a lot of good knowledge on how it goes with raising funds through that route as well as giving insight to why he would or would not invest in a company.  Angel investors are the step before something like VC funding, as they are often a smaller group or individual investors.  Aside from the money investment, they can also have a lot of value in knowledge of the market / business type, or they may have connections that could be valuable.  He mentioned that sometimes it can help to ask the investor to be on an advisory board, depending on who or what they know.  When talking about business structures, he prefers LLC as opposed to an S-corporation, and recommended that to be one of the better routes.  An S-corp can eliminate a lot of potential investors as it cannot have shareholders who are  LLC.  Additionally, he stated to be careful about how much equity is given when raising funds.  It can be dangerous to give too much away and it can leave the possibility of being forced out of your company, so it is always best to keep the majority of equity.  He also stressed how important business competitions can be for practicing pitches, as well as securing possible funding through prize money or grants.  Lastly, an important note from his presentation is, make sure the business plan is well written.  A sloppy plan that is unorganized or not checked for grammatical errors will turn off a lot of investors.

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