Step 4: My finance strategy
Congratulations!
You’re ready now to engage with investors.
It is very important to spend enough time and efforts to prepare the appropriate formats to present your green company. This is an almost endless process, during which you will repeatedly fine-tune the materials you have prepared. In this section we’ll provide you with different tools to define your fundraising strategy and to arrive well prepared to meet your investors, always taking into consideration your development stage.
→ But first… download our handy Fundraising Readiness Checklist:
Your business stage is EARLY STAGE.
→ Check out our recommended materials & different tools below to define your fundraising strategy and to arrive well prepared to meet your investors.Good luck!
2. Crowdfunding
What do I have to do if I want to start a Crowd funding campaign?
The SwitchMed programme developed a specific guide that addresses eco-entrepreneurs and eco and social initiatives in the southern Mediterranean, to orient them in the implementation of a crowd funding campaign: preparing a campaign, mobilizing a community, optimizing the transformation, carrying out a campaign, and creating loyalty in a community.
→ Get here the access to the guide on the concrete actions you have to take to launch your crowdfunding campaign:
Download
3. Business Angels
How do I engage with them?
The green entrepreneurs seeking to engage a business angel investor should do their homework on the people who they hope to make their pitch for capital to. They should also seek to inject a sense of passion into their presentations and look for cues from the investors that suggest they are responding favourably.
→ Get here the Green Entrepreneurs Power Point pitch guideline and prepare your pitch according what are the 5 most important things for angel investors:
- The quality, passion, commitment, and integrity of the founders.
- The market opportunity being addressed and the potential for the company to become very big.
- A clearly thought out business plan.
- An appropriate valuation with reasonable terms.
- The viability of raising additional rounds of financing if progress is made.
The One Pager Document
The one pager is a document where to briefly resume your business idea and include all the critical facts about your company, as minimal information.
The most important statements you should care about in the one pager are the following ones:
→ Your company Mission:
a one-sentence explanation of what your company provides to capitalize on that big change. It might surprise you how often we can get 20 minutes into a meeting without a clear picture of exactly what a company does.
→ Your business summary:
This is the cover page, where you should be able to resume your business idea, the benefits for investors, and the innovative character of the product/service you’re delivering.
When preparing the one-pager, you should take care of underlining and communicate some key facts about your business: when did you create your company? How many employees do you have? What stage of development / market traction? How much money are you looking to rise and in which time span?
All this information, as much detailed as possible, helps the investor to understand your finance needs and to define a first possible matching.
A good manner to organise all the above information is preparing a good company profile.
The company profile collects and shows all the relevant information is an easy and quick way to investors and can be a good tool to be used during the investors ‘meetings.
→ Get here the Company profile example:
Download→ Get here the Company profile template:
Download
4. Microfinance
Similarly to bank loans, when applying for microfinance you will need to demonstrate your business is able to repay the lender you are asking money from.
Usually, interest rates apply, although conditions applied are more advantageous than in the case of Bank loans.
Suggested Tool: Profit & Loss statement
→ In both cases (micro-finance and bank loans) it deals with an application process, where you will need to provide lenders (either a micro lender or a bank) with some basic information around your business. These deals with proof of income, or something to demonstrate your business is generating cash flow.
→ Apart from an extensive description of your business (in form of a business plan), the most required tool is the profit & loss statement:
Download
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