Founders of companies who come up with a concept or an idea to solve a problem and build a company are very excited about what they’ve come up with and rightly so. But as human beings we also often tend to be the biggest fans of our own ideas and the problem with being the biggest fans of our own ideas is that we’re not necessarily being realistic about what others think about it or how they view it.
We all know and founders know that it is very difficult to raise angel financing but it is also the case that founders often think “but my deal is different”, “my idea is better”, “I have a bigger vision”, “my opportunity is greater”. Well, every founder thinks that, so if we know that few ideas are fundable, we know that there are a lot of founders that think that theirs are and they are really not. So being fundable is a function of the opportunity presented, how big the vision is, whether or not the founder has the right stuff to execute on a plan, is demonstrating that capability, can develop the right kind of relationship with investors.
Often times it’s a matter of whether or not that founder is a learning human being, is coachable, wants to learn, takes information in from the marketplace, and other places, and utilizes that to decide where their company is going and how to grow. So, being fundable is a very high bar and very difficult to accomplish especially at the very early stages of a new venture. It’s much easier to get funding when one has customers, one has revenue, and is on a path of growth before you even go to an angel investor. And, of course angel investors will like that type of opportunity. However, it’s often the case that founders feel that they need capital sooner than that and that’s where the difficulty comes in in terms of the capital gap that we hope angels will fill more of. But, there is still a bit of a chasm there for many founders in finding the financial resources they need.