How to Finance Your Startup 2020 – Startup Finance Event

Startup financing can take on many shapes, including bootstrapping, seed funding, crowdfunding, venture capital, unsecured business loans and much more.

To help clear things up, we visited the Startup Finance event in Toronto in March of 2020. At this event, venture funding leaders gathered to answer the most important questions about early stage business funding.

Topics discussed:

1. Seed Funding
2. Venture Capital
3. Bootstrapping
4. Crowdfunding
5. Asset Based Lending
6. Unsecured Working Capital

Key Takeaways:

1. Top ranked factor for investors when evaluating startups and scaleups: founder, CEO and the team around them
2. Focus on one core product instead of launching many products with little traction
3. A VC firm may pre-screen as many as 1,000 startups in a year
4. Try to test your product with paying customers instead of non-paying customers. Your feedback will be more valid.
5. You’ll get more NO’s than YES’s. Don’t take it personally. It doesn’t mean its a bad idea.
6. VCs will invest into people who are obsessed with their business and determined to win.
7. Find a way to make things happen. If you don’t know how to make a video for your crowdfunding campaign, then learn how to make a video with your phone.
8. A good startup can describe their business, problem or solution in 1 sentence.
9. Having senior people or co-founders on your team can help get funding. Your intellectual property (IP), and credibility of founder are all key.
10. If enough people see value, they will invest. What you do with the money is what makes the real difference.

Footage filmed at the Startup Finance event in Toronto in March 2020.

Vlad Sherbatov

Vlad is the President and Co-Founder of Smarter Loans, Canada's original and largest loan comparison website. He is a passionate entrepreneur and business leader in the Canadian financial sector. He was selected as a 2019 Top 25 Leaders in Lending by the Canadian Lenders Association. Vlad is an author at Smarter Loans, and has been featured in publications like the Toronto Star and National Post, among others.