ForumsStarting a Business

Have you created your business plan including financial projections?

If you have not done that yet the best starting point for you is to get what you want to do down on paper. Developing your business plan helps you to make your dream a reality; but only if you work at it to do the things necessary to reach your goal.

A good business plan is something that funding sources and/or prospective investors are going to want to see so that should be your priority at this point. Once you have your plan done, if it is solid and the business a viable opportunity and if you have good credit you may be able to get bank funding if you have the right collateral that they'll probably want.

You also may be able to find a local "Angel" investor who would provide some funding for you. You can search online for "angel investors" and you will find a number of resources and web sites that will help you find angel investors. Though most Angels that you find that way may be more interested in high growth businesses and larger transactions. Your best bet may be to check locally for smaller "angel" type investors that want to put smaller amounts of money into a business of your type.

You also might want to try "social lending" sites such as:

http://www.lendingclub.com/

https://us.zopa.com/

http://www.prosper.com/

There is a lot of good information and "business start-up" help to be found on this site from some of the professionals that participate in the community. Do a search for that and read more to get additional feedback that will help you with your business start-up.

Good luck and best wishes to you,
Dennis Lowery
Adducent, Inc.

Greg - are you looking for a loan or an investor? As previous post suggests, you'll need to have a business plan if you hope to convince a lender or investor to lend/invest $35K. The business plan doesn't need to be a novel, but it should answer some basic questions. Anyone who is going to give you money will want to know that you have thought through all potential issues. That said, you'll need to show sufficient income (from an existing source, not from projected profits) and have decent credit if you hope to have a bank look at it. There is no such thing as a banker who reads a business plan and says "that's a great idea, you've got the loan!" Unless you can show that you have the ability to repay regardless of how the business does, it will be an uphill battle. Banks are not equity holders, so their return on a loan is limited, so they can only accept so much risk.

Hope that helps.

Jason Milleisen, Small Business Consultant