An idea is worthless and useless without funding. Many ideas remain in the belly since there is no funding. Funding a startup or a business is bringing to reality a conceived bright idea with money.

Money answers all. An idea without funding remains idea until found in the market and widely used. In this post, we list 5 simple and amazing ways to fund your startup ideas.

5. RAISE FUND FROM FAMILY AND FRIENDS

Smiles! People don’t want to give out their money and nobody is to be blamed for that. It is their hard earned money and they have right over it. But wait, not everybody thinks like that. There are some bright, intelligent, understanding and free giving members of your family and friends that all what they need is that you convince them with what you want to use the money for.

The truth is that, not everybody is father Christmas, you must do your own assignment by presenting a well planned idea with reasons they must freely give you their money.

Just list at least twenty member of your family and friends that you know they are well doing and that have at least 20% potential to give out freely and know that you are to convince them with 80% though. The secret here is that, don’t ask them for a particular amount, just present your idea and budget to them and tell them to give any amount to support you.

Another strategy is that, let assume you want to raise ₦10,000, what of if 20 people give you ₦500 each? Just tell your 20 friends, guy please I need ₦500 and they will give before they know it because it is a very small amount.

See, in this method, you will face many rejections,, determination is the key here.

4. OFFER FREELANCE OR A COMMUNITY SERVICE

For you to be an entrepreneur, one of the attributes is to be versatile in many things. You must be able to have different skills from writing to leadership to technical to critical thinking and analysis etc. If you have these, then you have fund for your startup already. There are so many existing businesses that need that your simple skill, why don’t you offer them a freelance service for a token.

This has so many advantages to your upcoming startup in terms of spreading fast when launched because you have a market already through the medium you are offering freelance services. There are also many freelancing website where you can offer services to fund your idea.

3. PERSONAL SAVING

We should not assume you don’t have money because you eat and buy new wears all the time. Even without using the number 5 method, people give you money freely. Then it is time to start saving.

When your idea is hot like fire in your mind, you will know how to save your last dime to make it come to reality. As a youth Corp member, I saved 80% of my monthly allowance because what I want to do with my life after Youth Service was hot in my mind. You too can adopt this approach in raising fund for your idea.

Yes! Saving is not easy, it takes determination. There are some banks and platforms like piggybank.com that can help you in saving for your startup. All what you have to do is approach them and give them authority over your savings for a particular time. Before you know it, your fund is complete and your product ready for development.

2. BRING IN FINANCIAL PARTNER

Yes! It is becoming technical. We can’t shy away from the fact that the above methods may not work optimally. Some people don’t want to give their money without anything in return. Method of saving may not work too as your idea may require huge amount to be implemented.

Then, you will need to present your idea to a financial partner or venture capitalists with a stake in the business. What many financial partners or venture capitalists are looking for is a convincing idea that if they put their money, they will in return get good profit on their investment. So, your idea must be solving real life challenging problems, able to scale in a very short time and have a great ability to bring in money in short or long run.

You see, you have a great job to do here. The point is that there many people that have the fund you need, all you need is to convince them. There are financial institutions everywhere like banks that work in this line, approach them and pitch your idea to them.

1. SOURCE FOR GRANTS

Grant has put smile to the face of may entrepreneurs because grant is a free equity (that is they give you free) fund. This has become the best way to raise fund for a startup. But this come with a great price to get the prize of grant.

Your idea must be super excellent and solving real life problem and you must be ready to compete. There millions of entrepreneurs applying for the same grant application. So, you must be excellently exceptional to receive grants from any organisation.

Suggested Read: Five Grants Application closing soon

You must develop a writing and story telling skill to convince the grantors. All what the grantors want from you is for you to convince them with how your idea will solve society problems and impact the social community. Without a concrete idea of writing and story telling, grant may not work for you.

It all start from sourcing for which grants application is on going and its benefits. After sourcing, you fill the application form and that is where your writing skill and story telling starts. If you are successfully selected, you go for pitching by verbally and visually present your idea to your grantors. Then if you do exceptionally well, the grant becomes yours and other benefits attached to it.

Hope you enjoyed it. Kindly use the comment form for further clarification on any of the points.

https://stackpreneur.com.ng/2018/06/5-simple-and-amazing-ways-to-fund-your-startup-ideas/

Before you start raising funds in the project, the main thing is to understand the various stages of its life cycle. This will help determine what way (or combination of methods) you take to obtain startup financing. For example here is the article that covers methods of finding money for an early stage Startup. Some of them are for the US based entrepreneurs, but still very good article: https://eze.tech/blog/how-to-get-funding-for-an-early-stage-startup. Hope you will enjoy it!