I've finished my business plan, so how can I find funding

Question

Where can I find funding for my business

Answer 1

There are a lot of elements that go into answering that question.  

First, you don't necessarily need or want outside funding.  Not only is it expensive and time consuming, it can be a distraction from your business.  Often, if you break your business plan down into stages, you can think of ways to advance with little or no outside funding -- and you can learn a lot and build customer relationships while doing it

If you do need outside funding, there are two important things to remember:

1. You fund a project or stage of development.  So you don't want to just say "I need money", you want to say "I'm opening a store, so I need this much to lease it, build it out & equip it, this much for staring inventory, etc."   Know how much you need and what it will do to help grow your business, so that lenders will understand how they'll be repaid and investors will understand how they make money as your business grows
2. The type of funding is very specific to the type of project, business, stage of development and other factors.  A single business may want different types of funding for different projects or at various points.  And there are many options.  In addition to loans and investors, there are other types of borrowing, many types of crowdfunding (rewards, debt, equity), a range of "do it yourself" solutions (presales, revenue- or profit-share arrangements) and bootstrapping

Comments

The only thing I want to add here is that funding is easier with some level of product-market fit or validation of the concept. This makes you a lower investment risk.