Remember that time you showed up to meet a banker, thinking that plan you’d scribbled on the back of a napkin was the next best thing since Facebook, and the banking rep sat there in their steamed shirt and tie looking at you like you’d just arrived from Mars?
Money can be hard. Money for a new tech startup can be particularly hard:
How are you going to fund your venture? Should you seek debt or equity? Is one form of money more expensive than the other? What is the true cost of capital, including opportunity cost? What is opportunity cost? What’s a balloon payment? Dilution? What about an angel investor? What is an angel investor? And so on.
As a community rallying to support the birth and scale of tech companies, we've made it easy to quit your job and find a place to validate your concept. We've built great support programs to land early customers, grow revenue and launch products.
What we haven't done a great job at is clarifying how to properly, efficiently and cost-effectively fund your business throughout the stages of its lifecycle. Not all tech companies are created equal, nor is the path that they should take to fund themselves at each stage.
This column is the first in a new monthly series we’re calling “Banknotes.” Its aim is to raise financial literacy, simplify the complexity of financing for startup and scale-up tech companies, and inspire a conversation about how we collectively make cheaper, faster, better funding decisions in order to build rapidly growing and more sustainable global tech winners. We want it to be a resource that helps address money questions and accelerate your financing goals.
BDC, as the development bank, has a mandate to help create and develop strong Canadian businesses through financing, advisory services and capital, with a focus on small and medium-sized enterprises.
In partnership with Communitech and our commitment to strengthen the broader tech ecosystem, we are here to help great companies find the most effective path to growth. We've helped tech companies survive hard times and bridge the chasm of rapid expansion.
In the coming weeks we’ll share a variety of available content and tools and have provocative conversations about funding realities you might not like to hear – and some you may be able to take to the bank. We’ll hit topics like "funding killers," debt vs. equity, translating financial jargon, risk vs. return, “the raise,” and much more.
Please share your comments, areas of interest, sign up and stay tuned!
Banknotes is an occasional column offering financial advice to startups.
