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…

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.

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 just got off the phone with another one of the entrepreneurs that has successfully raised investment capital through FundingUniverse and, let me tell you, there is nothing better!  It’s so much fun to hear their unique story and hear about their learning experience.

With this company in particular, they participated in one of our SpeedPitching events last summer.  They met a significant group of investors that were interested in their plan, and were even invited to pitch in front of one of the angel groups.  After their pitch (to the angel group), they realized that they were not ready to move forward with an investor and went back to their preparations.  After about 6 months of working on their company, financial projections, and business plan… they are now back on the “fundraising trail.”  They have already raised a significant chunk of their total amount and will be pitching again in front of the same angel group within a month (to finish the round).

Anyway… if you want to make my day, give me a call at FundingUniverse headquarters to tell me your success story!

Introducing the Entrepreneur’s Roadmap!

What is the Entrepreneur Roadmap?

• A step-by-step guide that will walk you through the entire fundraising process
• It includes articles, webinars, and podcasts to teach you the secrets funding and building your business
• 13 lessons that you can complete at your own pace

Where do I find the Entrepreneur Roadmap?

We’ve got a new look! Login to your FundingUniverse account and you’ll be excited to see some of the improvements that we have made — including the new Entrepreneur Roadmap tab.

How will the Entrepreneur Roadmap help me?

Most people don’t learn anything about fundraising through high school or college. Unfortunately, it’s just not a part of the curriculum. While the classes aren’t taught at other universities, we know that it is one of the most important aspects of building your business. Here are just a few ways that it will help you in your quest to build a successful business:

• It will save you time and money
• It will save you potential embarrassment in front of an investor or lender
• It will help you focus your efforts on a specific type of capital
• It will teach you how to write a business plan
• It will help you create a financial plan to project future financial performance
• It may help you decide to not raise money and bootstrap instead

It’s now live!

For those of you that are looking for a little bit of guidance with your fundraising efforts, we’ve just released the “Entrepreneur’s RoadMap” to help you through the process.

The road map is designed to educate, prepare, and connect entrepreneurs. The guide will walk you through — step-by-step — the fundraising process so that you have all of your options at your fingertips.

The education section will teach you:

1. How to take advantage of the FundingUniverse tools
2. Help you decide if you really need to raise capital
3. Teach you the type of funding that you need (self-funding, FFFs, debt, equity, etc.)
4. Guide you to know how much money you really need

The preparation section will:

1. Prepare for raising equity capital (writing a biz plan, creating financial statements, preparing pitch, etc.)
2. Adequately prepare to secure a loan
3. Provide detailed tips to the fundraising process

And, finally, the connect stage will:

1. Teach you how to get exposure to your investor/lender audience

The roadmap is now available for all DealReady Subscribers! To access the program, login to your entrepreneur console.

The next FundingUniverse Speedpitching event on August 29, 2007 provides a perfect opportunity for investors and entrepreneurs to meet. If selected to present at the event an entrepreneur will have the chance to pitch to dozens of accredited investors. Investors will see ten quality deals just over lunch. To apply to participate in the Speedpitching event visit

http://www.fundinguniverse.com/services/339/340/utah-speedpitching.html

The Speedpitching event is a sweet opportunity to pitch an idea to a roomful of investors. (Really, our last event in June was so packed with accredited investors, it was standing room only.) If you are looking to raise capital or trying to find the next great deal join us on Wednesday August 29, 2007.

NOW, the PBS newsmagazine, in collaboration with Ashoka, the association of  leading social entrepreneurs, have announced a search for the next leading social entreprenuer.

In a press release NOW executive producer, John Siceloff, explains the goal of the competition.

“The PBS mission encourages our viewers to ‘Be More, and Do More.’ Project Enterprise is a great way to see what it takes to hatch and execute an amazing idea with a sustainable business model,This is the first time a social entrepreneur will be voted on and followed in this way, and we hope it inspires as much as it enlightens.”

To get more information or to nominate someone visit: http://www.pbs.org/now/enterprisingideas/project-enterprise.html

According to the press release, “the ideal nominee will be someone who is launching or has recently launched a project that draws on business practices as well as other innovative strategies to achieve a social mission and that has potential to lead to widescale pattern change. Finalists will be announced in August. The competition winner will be announced in September, then followed with coverage deep into 2008.”

While reading through our daily entrepreneur news brief, I found an incredibly valuable website with hundreds of free articles on Management and Business. I think that one of the greatest take-aways from being an entrepreneur is the opportunity to learn. In fact, it is because we believe so much in learning and education that we have provided with Company Histories and the Sample Business Plans content for FREE.

I love reading blogs. I love reading quality content about entrepreneurship and angel investing. Hopefully FundingUniverse is continually feeding your thirst of valuable content. If not, we’d love to hear your suggestions on how to improve. I’d also love to hear about what other blogs you are currently reading so that I can add it to my Google RSS Reader.