Instigator Blog

Lately, I’ve been doing a lot of pitching to investors, including angel investors and venture capitalists. It’s a fact of life when you run a venture-backed startup. It’s one of those things that no one ever tells you about raising money — once you start, you never stop.

It will take on average 4-6 months to raise money, so when you raise an early seed round (say in the $250k-$500k range) it won’t last long. That means the minute you cash that check, you’re out there again, raising more.

I’ve written about pitching investors before. And I’ve also posted some common questions investors will ask during the investment process. The points I made in both posts remain true, but here are some additional insights I’ve learned over the last few months of pitching, pitching and more pitching:

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Most people will tell you that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. So if you’re in Montreal, and you’re interested in technology and entrepreneurship, you should think about joining us for breakfast on Tuesday, May 13th @ 9am at Bistro, Etc.

Here are the details:

• Tuesday, May 13th @ 9am
• Location: Bistro, Etc. - 1291 Avenue du Mont-Royal, E.
• Facebook Event Listing: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=13095875628
• Facebook Group: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=5502019497

We run the breakfast on the 2nd Tuesday of every month.

Anyone involved in technology + entrepreneurship (developers, startup entrepreneurs, curious people, angel investors, VCs, etc.) are welcome.

Software startups always start out very heavily focused on technology. They have to be; they’re building some kind of software application and most of their time has to go into doing that properly. Most software startup teams are made up entirely of developers or weighted in that direction. Have a team of 4? I bet 3 of those people are technical…

At Standout Jobs we have 8 people full-time. Six of those are on the technical side. That’s fairly common amongst early stage software startups.

But at some point, most software startups have to start changing. You can only focus on the technology for so long. Eventually, you have to start marketing and selling it. Occasionally you’ll find developers that can also serve as marketers and business development gurus, but more than likely you’ll hire on additional people to help.

Thats the evolution of a software startup — from being a technology company to being a sales & marketing company.

Most successful software companies make the leap.

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The guys behind StartupNorth and a number of other initiatives, have recently launched StartupIndex, which they describe as, “…a free, community-based index of technology startups and investors in Canada.”

It’s similar to CrunchBase and TraveVibes.

This is a much-needed addition to the startup scene in Canada. It’s great for Canadian startups but also for others, around the world, to get a detailed glimpse into what’s going on here.

Anyone can update entries, but I believe they’re approving them all manually. Each startup’s entry can include basic information - size of company, industry, blog RSS feed, investor information, etc. Over time you can see more and more data and content appearing for each startup’s profile (and for investors), which will make this a must-use resource.

Here’s a miniature version of the Standout Jobs profile (click the image for a full view):

If you don’t think personal branding is important, you’re flat out nuts.

Nowadays it’s so much easier to brand yourself online - through blogging, social media, networking - and then leverage that effectively offline as well. Bringing your online branding efforts offline is key; because you can’t live exclusively online. And this is especially true in the job market.

There are plenty of places online to look for jobs, and we know that Gen Y and Gen X do almost all of their job searching online. It makes completely sense. And now we’re seeing tools to help companies and candidates brand themselves more effectively online. But ultimately, hiring people is about one-on-one connections and meeting people face-to-face to see if there’s a fit. The online job market helps bring people together, and it’s getting better at it, but you still need to bring your online brand with you when you meet potential employers for interviews, etc.

Dan Schawbel gets personal branding.

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