You can enable subtitles (captions) in the video player
Here in Monaco, money is all around us. But when starting a business, it can be in short supply. We spoke with successful entrepreneurs about how to raise cash and how to spend it wisely.
How able are you to create the earliest version of your idea so that you can show investors exactly what you're thinking versus telling investors what you're thinking? So the ability to show versus tell is step one of building a great business.
My advice is to build your first version for almost no money. Then approach investors. And at that point, I advise not to go with the friend and family route, because if your idea can't survive outside third-party investors, perhaps it's not an idea whose time is ripe.
We had nothing. We started from nothing. But my husband, he had ideas how to make technical solutions of some products. And we collected some money from the family and started very small production. But I think to collect money from family, it's always very dangerous. And it can even destroy the family. So I wouldn't recommend this.
My advice would be not to get involved with any family members. The relationships are more important than the money. And there's a number of examples of why you shouldn't do that.
I think your best bet would be, if you have a really great product and a great idea, and you have a great go to market strategy, and if you have all of your ducks in a row, the raising of the funds shouldn't be an issue if you have a great value proposition.
For those in a start-up environment, I really recommend to take a bigger portion of equity. So again, family and friends, business angels, VC, PE rather than with bank loans. And this depends also on the sector. So if you have assets which you can take as backing the banking loan, then it might work with loans, i.e. real estate. But if you're a high-tech company, whether it's biotech or e-commerce or a disruptor, then your asset is in here, yeah?
