All potential funding options should be placed in a timeline so that your company has a deifned strategy to apply for public funding
Sondre Jacobsen has been involved with over 60 startups, and is now helping others through the company IMISU AS. He was the guest speaker at Launchpad Day October 3rd where he gave some valuable tips.
Faith, hope and love is not a strategy!
What to avoid
— The easiest mistake to avoid is to base everything on faith and hope. Faith, hope and love is not a strategy! Every time you use a noun and/or words like faith, hope, think, feel and so on, it means that you don’t have enough information. Ask yourselves, would you buy a tool that the salesman feel that you need, or would you pick the tool based on his argues that it gets the job done in 50% of the time, lasting 25% longer? Are you basing your decisions on your feelings, or do you consider hard cold facts for the end result?
Funding vs investors
— Both state funding and investors drain time from value-added work. The disadvantage with an investor is that they have short term goals, take holdings and generally can have a tendency of getting involved in the project. State funding won’t, and when you get the funds there are no strings attached. A big pro with state funding is that you are forced to reformulate and sell your idea better every time. Applying SkatteFUNN will help making your application better. If you get a refusal they always explains why, so you get the blueprint to getting it right the next time.
Are you new to the game? Well, dont quit your day job.
The right focus
— Are you new to the game? Well, dont quit your day job. The odds are against you, and you are most likely to fail. If you’re going to be a founder you have to set your mind to trying again every time you fail. I’m not in it for the passion or fun. I intend to earn money, as fast and as much as I can. That means I must get stuff done, and done again, no matter what. There are a million excuses on the way to failure: you get ill, it was someone else’s fault, it was just bad luck or whatever. If you spend time feeling sorry for yourself and don’t get shit done, you will fail.
If you spend time feeling sorry for yourself and don’t get shit done, you will fail
Remember this:
1) delaying tasks equals 3 times delay in incoming money
2) the road to hell is paved with good intentions
3) luck favors the prepared mind
— If you’re a founder and your primary goal is not to earn money but to have fun, you are doing it as a hobby. The definition of an amateur is doing something that you love, but doesn’t earn you a paycheck or a upside.
And if you’re still leaning on faith and hope; there are completely different directions to take, if you want to.