Options to Help Finance a New Business

Probably the first thing you want to go to is friends, fools and family - sometimes the most difficult money to ask for.

It’s a very hard thing.  It may be it's easy to ask Aunt Sally to write a check for you if she can afford to do so, but it's really difficult to go back to Aunt Sally and tell her you lost all her money on your great idea; it's not a great way to build family relationships.

There are several sources of money available to early-stage companies: there are friends and family as I just discussed.

There are also angel investor groups - there are a lot of professional and angel investor groups have been established where groups of high net worth individuals come together to invest in companies.

There are also institutional seed stage investors, which are early-stage venture capital funds that look to invest in seed stage companies.  Their investments can range from a couple hundred thousand dollars to a million dollars or more.