If you are an entrepreneur, you will have noticed that financing is an absolute priority to launch or grow your startup (and transform it into a scale-up and more!). To do this, you can consider calling on investors by launching a fundraising round. In this article, we offer you an overview of the different stages of a startup fundraising round and our advice for promoting your startup to investors.
The main principles of fundraising
Fundraising is a process that involves soliciting external investors to finance the start-up, launch or development of a business.
There are two distinct types of fundraising depending on the maturity of the company:
Seed capital: your project is defined, your business plan is finalized but you have not yet started your activity and you are looking to finance your initial needs.
Development capital: you want to accelerate the growth of your startup - for example, by launching a new activity or developing it internationally - and you need funds to finance this growth.
In both cases, the principle remains the same for fundraising: look for investors who believe in the potential of your project and are ready to invest! Thus, they will take a stake in the capital of your company. To raise funds, you will therefore issue securities, which will be allocated to the capital of your company and sell them to investors. These securities are used to finance the development needs of your startup. Investors will therefore seek to receive profits.