I’m up in Seattle today getting ready for tomorrow’s Northwest LivePitch event.  Carolynn has been working her tail off up here to host the event and things are coming together quite nicely.  As of earlier today, we had around 100 people that had RSVP’d for the event.  We also have 15 companies that have been selected to pitch with a Rockstar panel of judges that include:

• Nathan Kaiser, nPost.com
• Todd Dean, NorthWest Keiretsu Forum
• Tom Ryan, Atlas Recruiting
• Jim Roberts, UW Technology Transfer
• Rebecca Lovell, Alliance of Angels
• Buzz Bruggeman, ActiveWords
• John Kauffman, Stoel Rives

In addition to the event, we are excited to announce that Chris Pirillo, the well-known technologist, will be broadcasting the event live!  For those that want to check things out, go to http://live.pirillo.com at 2 pm PST (3 pm MST) and check things out!

We are excited to finally announce that we officially have a presence in the Northwest.  Let’s be honest, we’ve had a web presence in the region for over 18 months, but we are now setting up events, meetings, partnerships, and networking opportunities throughout the region.

If you are reading this and are in the Northwest, I invite you to get a hold of Carolynn Duncan.  Carolynn has taken the lead on everything that is happening and has done an amazing job!  More news to come…

It’s been a while since I’ve written about one of our Speedpitching events.  Last week, when we sent out an email announcing our upcoming event on June 4th (in Utah), we received an email response from one of our previous participants:

The first Speedpitch event that I participated in was wonderful - a terrific experience. The Speedpitch put our company in front of a lot of different types of angels, got us about a dozen follow-up meetings, as well as several term sheets. It was a great position to be it having to choose between competing funding offers - and I am sure that the Speedpitch event allowed us to be in that position. We have since raised close to $1 million through equity and licensing deals and we will be looking to grow to the next level very soon.

Can I tell you how much fun it is to get emails like that? 

I just read an article on TechCrunch about how the independent film “Artemis Eternal” has already raised $40k of the $100k total amount that they are seeking for the film project via “crowd-funding.” In other words, they are allowing the public to contribute as little as $1 to fund their film development and “cut out the middle man.”

This announcement is very interesting to me because we see so many independent films and we normally just turn them away (unless there is a special circumstance). There are very few companies that we turn away at FundingUniverse, but as of today, we don’t have any confidence helping films to get funding — they are just too high risk for the overwhelming majority of investors. To be honest, it is just a world that we don’t know very well and so we don’t feel comfortable helping film-makers.

Because of the demand and the pain in the market, we’ve thought a lot about dedicating a portion of our site to helping film-makers through the fundraising process, however, maybe we should just refer them to Artemis and learn how to raise “crowd-funding.” For those of you that have raised money for films, where did you go? We’d love to learn more about this industry.

We’re very pleased to announce that FundingUniverse has recently been named the #2 Start-up to Watch by the Utah Valley BusinessQ Magazine.  We were very honored by the award and are humbled to join such a prestigious group of companies on the UV50 list.

Also, we’re also humbled to have been selected to vSpring Capital’s v100 list — the top 100 venture entrepreneurs in the state of Utah.  Thanks to you, our customers for the confidence.  And congrats to the entire FundingUniverse team!

As a startup, it’s a challenge to manage cash — don’t worry, we know.  But one of the things that we’ve learned (through both personal experience and with helping other entrepreneurs) is that there of creative ways to bootstrap/finance your company.  Let me provide a few examples:

1. Leasing computers.  Instead of going to the nearest electronic store and purchasing a new computer, go to one of the large manufactures (Dell, HP, etc.) and see if you can obtain a credit line to finance the computers you need.  We’ve seen that most companies can usually obtain a $25k line of credit pretty quickly.
2. Credit Cards:  If you do your homework, there are quite a few credit cards out there that will allow a company obtain more than the standard $3-$5k limit.
3. Other credit lines:  one of the examples that I like to use is Google.  For those of you that use Google adwords, do what you can to get a hold of an account manager to help you obtain a credit line on your ads.  Instead of maxing out your credit cards every other day paying for your ads, they will often provide a credit line that helps you to manage your cash flow.

Those are just a few quick examples.  Remember, cash is king.  Do all that you can to keep cash in your hands and allow others to finance your business for you!

Over the past few months, we’ve spent a lot of time learning about the various types of financing that is available to businesses.  In fact, we are working on a significant partnership that will allow us to help a lot more entrepreneurs obtain unsecured lines of credit.  For those of you that are interested, here are a few tips that you’ll need before you approach any bank/lender:

1. 680+ Credit Score (if you don’t quite have that high of score, that’s ok too… we’ll just start off helping you repair your credit)
2. 2+ years in business
3. Make sure that all of your personal and business credit is accurate with the credit bureaus
4. Obtain a DUNS number for your business
5. Obtain credit maturity (length of time) and credit diversity (credit lines with multiple types of credit — home, auto, revolving, etc.)

I could probably create a list with about 30-40 items, but those 5 will get you started.  The two “biggies” are the first two — if you have a great credit score and you’ve been in business for at least 2 years, let us know.  We are very confident that we’d be able to help you obtain an unsecured line of credit somewhere between $10k-$350k.

Especially as your team grows, there is often a disconnect between the person or people raising money and the rest of those in the company.  As you are assessing your needs, you should gather everyone up at least once to get down to the nitty gritty details of what is needed.  Find out where your team needs help, both with more people, technology, or supplies.  Make sure the expectations are realistic on both the management and employee end of the deal.  Sometimes the little things that make a company are forgotten in the midst of trying to raise money for a big hire or nationwide marketing campaign.  New computers, a human resource manager, or IT manager can often be just as important in the long term health of your company.  To be cliche, don’t forget the little guy.

After some great feedback and suggestions from both our entrepreneurs & investors, we have released a new service that will allow our entrepreneur members to contact investor network! This new feature will allow and encourage open communication between both the investors and entrepreneurs. So far, we’ve received great feedback from both groups.

Here is a quick screen shot of the search criteria (image is reduced in size):

After searching, it will pull up the profiles of each of the investors that meet your search criteria. In this case, you’ll see that there were 10 investors in my area that met the search criteria that I input.

Anyway… check it out and let us know what you think!

I spent some time watching/listening to a panel of Silicon Valley Angel investors moderated by Guy Kawasaki.  The panel featured three rock-star bay area angels including:

1.  Andy Bechtolsheim:  Co-Founder and Chief Architect and Sr. VP, Network Systems, Sun Microsystems — Google’s first angel investor
2. Ron Conway:  Independent Angel Investor, former Founder & Managing Partner of Angel Investors LP — probably one of the most active angels I’ve heard of (he has invested in over 120 companies over the past couple years)
3. Dr. Ian Sobieski:  Managing Director, Band of Angels Fund

Here are a few highlights and tips from the video:

• Ron and Andy told the “Google Story” — how & when they first invested in Google.
• Non-intended “plug” for our Speedpitching events from each of the investors:  “within 5 minutes, I can know if I’m interested.”
• Why is an angel preferred to a VC?
• What is the primary motivation of angel investors?  Obviously each angel wants to make money, but beyond that, the angel likes to interact and work with entrepreneurs.  Entrepreneurs are the future.  They also want to be able to give back and be a part of something where they can lend help and expertise.
• Guy does a good job moderating and getting to the meat of the conversation:  how do you find deals?  What should the entrepreneur’s pitch look like?  (Keep it short:  1-4 page executive summary, no more than 20 page PPT, etc.)
• “Planning is essential.  Plans are useless.”  The process of writing a business plan is important for the internal success of the company… but the document that you submit to investors should be a very shortened version focused on management, market/financial opportunity, sustainable competitive advantages, and traction.

Highly recommended.  If you are an entrepreneur trying to raise investment capital, check it out!