If your company is at a point in its history and experiencing solid growth where you are considering looking for outside investors for your capital needs, then you want to know if your business will be or can be attractive to investors. If you plan to search for equity investors, you should know that they will expect a significant return on their investment (20% to 50% is not uncommon) and many times within 5 years. These investors will look carefully at the candidate company to characteristics that include, but are not limited to: a solid and proven management team; potential company growth; solid business plan; and evidence of strategic thinking and planning in a strategic plan with vision, mission core values and short term & long term goals.

Often the media portrays the best source of capital for a start-up company to be venture funding. Therefore, many people think that venture funding is the only source of start-up capital. This is not true, funding from SBIR grants to bank loans to credit cards is readily available.