Are you approaching the right VCs with your business idea?  In the U.S. alone, there are thousands of VC firms and individuals who are ready to invest their capital in new businesses.  However, each VC has a particular industry or business focus for their investment funds.  You can save a lot of time by doing your homework and researching VC firms to know the right ones you should target.

Do It Yourself Research

If you have the time, you can find a number of online directories of venture capitalist firms.  If you do research on your own, be sure to only use the most recent directories.  You don’t want to find a great VC firm that has since closed shop or changed their investment focus.

Investment Firm Research

With the daunting number of VC firms existing in the U.S., it may be worth your while to hire an investment research firm.  These firms conduct research on venture capitalist firms and keep accurate, comprehensive, and up-to-date databases on which firms offer private investment funds to what types of businesses.  These research firms are relatively inexpensive and can save a great deal of time and money for you.  Pay by the inquiry or pay a small monthly or quarterly subscription for valuable data anytime.

Choose by Industry

What is your business industry?  Is your business idea in a technology manufacturing industry?  Or are you involved in a service industry focusing on investment advice to customers?  You will find that there are venture capitalist firms available for private equity funding for almost any industry, but you need to find the right one for your idea.  

Many VC firms will also focus their equity funding into very large businesses with the ultimate goal of incorporating and offering an IPO on the stock market.  On the other hand, some VCs will look at smaller to mid-size businesses that plan to remain privately owned.  Take a look at a venture capital firm’s preferences when choosing the ones with whom you want to market your plan. 

A well researched list of potential venture capitalists will help your new business find the best financing options available.  It saves time and money and allows your leadership team to focus marketing plans and presentation efforts to the venture capitalists most likely to take notice. 

Tags: angel investor, find angel investors, venture capital, Venture Capitalist

This entry was posted on Monday, December 15th, 2008 at 3:09 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.