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Venture Capital Journal recently said startups & investors meet at Mixergy events.

Before Looking for Funding, Get an Advisor


As part of my preparation for the Mixergy Funding Forum, today I talked with Eric Pollard, founder of VentureAssist.

One of Eric’s suggestions for startups is to look for advisers before looking for funding. Seek out people that you trust in your vertical to help you think through your idea. Then get advisers who have been through the funding process a few times to help you figure if you have a plan that can be funded and how to present that plan to investors.

Eric suggests these advisers:

David Berkus - Chairman Emeritus of the Tech Coast Angles

Lynn Foster Jr. - Emerging Technologies Director at Greenberg Traurig, LLP

I’ll add Michael Jones, founder of Userplane.

Who else would make a good adviser for startups?

Who else should I talk with to prepare for this forum?

[Emad, thanks for referring me to Eric.]

May 14, 2008 | Filed Under Uncategorized 

comments

7 Responses to “Before Looking for Funding, Get an Advisor”

  1. emad on May 15th, 2008

    heh…no problem :-)

  2. Damon Young on May 15th, 2008

    I may be biased because I consider him a friend, but I think any startup would be very blessed to spend some time sitting down with Chris Gammill

  3. Damon Young on May 15th, 2008

    Chris is pretty passionate about supporting and advising startups - I believe he’s primarily focused on business, growth & market strategies, but I suspect he also has recommendations regarding funding as well.

  4. gammill on May 15th, 2008

    Damon, Thanks for the shouts - greatly appreciated. I do love being involved in startups as an advisor and/or operator. I span the range from funding to strategy to marketing. It’s great fun and I get to work with great people.

  5. Why I love being an advisor… « traction matters… on May 15th, 2008

    […] already made my contributions and now it’s in the founders/CEOs hands). I also saw a post at Mixergy commenting on getting an advisor before getting funded. These two threads/posts got me thinking […]

  6. Tony Karrer on May 19th, 2008

    Dave and Chris are great guys to know. There are lots of other people who are good to talk to on this out of Pasadena and TechCoast Angels. Sometimes, it’s hard to get into these folks. Actually, the list here is pretty long. But it seems like matching start-ups to advisors is a bit tough. Andrew - maybe there’s a start-up to be had doing that.

  7. Andrew Warner on May 19th, 2008

    Good point Tony.

    You can find someone to guide you through any other part of business, from PR to accounting. But funding you have to figure out alone.

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