How common is it to raise money for a company that will provide a variety of unrelated products?
My partner and I have come up with a unique technology that can provide a solution to many small scale problems. We've been working on the technology full-time for the past 5 months and now we are running out of money.
As far as we understand, if we wish to raise capital, we need to provide a business plan with a single project that will result in large revenue, otherwise investors won't be keen on investing. How common is it, if at all, to raise money for a technology company that will provide a variety of products, which are (to some extent) unrelated?
Technology Investors Fundraising
2 Answers
Raising money from Angel Investors or Venture Capital often takes a long time (months), so if you are running out of money soon, that may not be a good route. If that is the case, maybe it would be better to concentrate less on development for a while and more on customer acquisition, so that you can get some revenue coming in.
If you want to get investment, I'd certainly recommend the book Venture Deals by Brad Feld, which covers a lot of useful detail.
Getting investment for a variety of things might be harder, as it might look like you lack focus. Better to present it as one idea that is so good it can be applied to several situations.
It is relatively common for a tech company to wish to raise money for a variety of unrelated products. It is also relatively hard to do.
An investor-focused way of looking at it is that most investors don't invest in technology, they invest in the prospect of sales. So they want to see you have potential customers (or preferably sales) for one of those products. It's hard to develop customers in many markets at once: often the technology needs to be adapted, for instance. So you should be spending time getting customers, which normally means focusing on a market.
A more cynical entrepreneur-focused way of saying it is: "pick a primary market and push that, then mention 2-3 other secondary markets". Anything other than that and you risk sounding unfocused.
