Funding and Building your Business

The goal of your meeting with the angel should be to reach a verbal agreement to invest.

Most inventions take years to come to fruition. Have patience and follow due diligence in your steps to patenting your invention and your years of hard work will finally pay off.

"Universities today are leading industry, not the other way around," Lazaridis said. And that’s precisely how it should be. "Industry needs to build up our receptor capacity to understand the research that top university students are doing today. Often we don’t understand it, and we somehow make that the students’ problem. But maybe the reason we don’t understand it is that we just don’t understand it. And these students are decades ahead of us, and it’s not their problem that we don’t understand what they’re telling us."

If you have a product that’s successful, and understand why, what made it unique, and how it worked for every stakeholder, then you can extend it and grow your business into a world-renowned brand.

If a shipment of lava lamps arrives at your company… you’ve been googleplexed.

The life of a startup can be precarious, a wrong turn disastrous. Harvard Business School professor Constance Bagley discusses the most frequent flops made by entrepreneurs, everything from hiring the wrong lawyer to puffing up the business plan.

If you want to attract customers in an increasingly competitive world, it helps to tell tales about your products. Just make sure your lie is true.

The goal is to create independent business units within Cargill that can immediately contribute to the bottom line.

"I am always looking for a great idea and a large market opportunity with strong leadership and a fair price. The last piece is usually what doesn’t intersect. I like a lot of companies, but I can’t always negotiate the right entry point." Typically he looks for companies run by the classic entrepreneur. "You have to be half-crazy to be an entrepreneur and do a startup. A great leader is manic and will go to the mat. So I look for those qualities."

This will be an excellent way to learn how to “play the investing game” as well as meet new fellow entrepreneurs and local Angels. Current and potential Angel investors are also encouraged to attend as we expand the Angel Network in Missoula, Bozeman and throughout Montana.