Funding and Building your Business

One in four workers who have not found jobs are considering launching a business, a CareerBuilder.com survey says.

The problem? In short, limited partners–the institutions (endowments, pension funds, foundations, etc) pouring cash into venture capital firms–were flooding the industry.

One of the world’s pre-eminent venture capitalists, Michael Moritz of Sequioa Capital http://www.sequoiacap.com/, has picked winners like Flextronics, Cisco Systems, Yahoo, PayPal and Google by focusing on small teams or individuals that on first glance might appear to be unfundable.

There are plenty of entrepreneurs who refuse to throw in the towel. Instead they’re coming up with creative ways to keep their companies afloat.

Within the challenging space of Web-based consumer software, Cape had some valuable insights to share. Here’s a quick rundown:

“What is a Term Sheet and what do all the terms mean?”

His is important advice at a time when businesses are competing for shrinking dollars and increasingly cash-strapped and brand-savvy customers.

"Don’t set up a system where you make it more attractive for me to break the laws rather than follow them. Don’t make it so my competition can put me out of business by breaking the law."

“It’s nice to be able to tell your brand manager or the chief marketing officer which audience is interacting with the unit, what time of day, what day of the week, and what the response is on certain types of offers. Before, nobody could really tell you that.”

It’s refreshing in this land of business plans, elevator pitches and exhaustive ROI analyses to stumble upon a business that practically started itself.