Venturewell.org (2020) reported that the biggest challenges faced by their invested student ventures include getting funding beyond the grant stage and securing major investment to propel a venture forward, which requires a clear value proposition, evidence of product-market fit, and an initial, vetted business model. The early success of student ventures often starts with securing major funding or acquiring major customers. The success bolsters students’ confidence and self-efficacy and also gains legitimacy for the existence of the business (Haring, 2018). This Guide introduces resources to help you navigate funding options and identify funding opportunities.

The courses selected can be audited for free and you can find the audit instructions for Coursera and Edx courses.

How to Finance and Grow Your Startup – Without VC (University of London)

This course will introduce, and help you put to use in your startup, the five models through which your customers can – and will, if you ask them! – fund your business. These five time-tested models have been put to use by entrepreneurial superstars like Michael Dell, Bill Gates, Richard Branson and more.

Financing for Startup Businesses (Duke University)

This course will teach you how to manage a startup’s financing strategy, where you will learn how to build capitalization tables (or “cap tables”) in Excel. Cap tables will help you explore different financing strategies for your startup company and determine which financing decisions are best for your entrepreneurial venture.

Entrepreneurship 4: Financing and Profitability (The University of Pennsylvania)

Start-ups can benefit from a wide variety of financing options on the path to profitability, but how do you know which one to choose? This course explores different financing models, including bootstrapping, organic growth, debt and risk capital, and also provides a clear overview of equity financing including the key types of investors: angels, venture capital, and crowdfunding.

Financing Innovative Ventures (University System of Maryland)

This course will demystify key financial concepts to give aspiring and active entrepreneurs and innovators a guide for understanding their financials and securing funding.

Financing and Profiting from Innovation for Corporate Entrepreneurs (University of Maryland)

This course is for aspiring or active corporate entrepreneurs who want to understand how to secure and manage funding for their corporate venture. We will demystify key accounting and financing concepts to give corporate entrepreneurs a guide to developing the business case for their ideas, and securing funding to translate ideas into reality.

Financing Your Venture: Angel Investment (Kauffman Foundation)

Ian Sobieski, investor and managing director of the Band of Angels Venture Fund, highlights the benefits and specialties of angel investors, underlines the keys to finding and engaging an angel, and defines how to get the most out of your relationship after the deal is made.

Financing Your Venture: Venture Capital (Kauffman Foundation)

Jeff Bussgang, entrepreneur, venture capitalist and educator at Harvard Business School, offers advice on how to stand out to an investor, how to know when you need venture capital funding, and what to watch out for when negotiating your deal.

Fundamentals of Funding, with Goldman Sachs 10,000 Women (Goldman Sachs)

In this course, you will learn how to finance business opportunities that lead to growth, by exploring different types of funding. You will learn how acquisition financing and funding applications for grants or loans can support and expand your business opportunity. You will evaluate your business’s financial profile and plan actions to improve it.

Fundraising Fundamentals By Geoff Ralston (Y Combinator)

YC Partner Geoff Ralston gives an introduction to the key concepts to keep in mind once you enter a fundraising process.

How to Raise Money and How to Succeed Long-Term (Y Combinator)

Jess Lee (Partner at Sequoia Capital) and Aaron Harris (Partner at YC) discuss raising money as an early-stage company, and how to think about the fundraising process. Ali Rowghani (CEO of YC Continuity, previously CFO, COO @ Twitter, CFO @ Pixar) shares his thoughts on how to be a great leader and succeed long-term.

Angel & Accelerator Funding for University Startups (Osage University Partners) and a follow-up conversation

Join OUP for a webinar discussing models, structures, and best practices in raising pre-seed and seed funding for university startup companies from angels and accelerators. Our panel of experts will review their own models, which are distinct from each other in both the areas in which they invest as well as the additional value they provide. Other topics covered will include raising pre-seed and seed amounts, timing, and structures for the raises, how to meet with these types of investors, the roles potentially played by these investors with the startups, and much more.

Launch and Grow your Business with Crowdfunding(eCornell)

Join Olivia Owens, Head of Partnerships at IFundWomen, for an interactive workshop on leveraging crowdfunding for your business. You’ll come away from this workshop with a honed pitch, a network map, a winning rewards strategy, and a marketing plan for your crowdfunding campaign.

The New Angel Investing (Stanford e-corner)

Ashley Flucas is the founder and general partner of Flucas Ventures. Based in West Palm Beach, Florida, the syndicate of around 2,000 angel investors has invested in more than 200 startups. Flucas, a graduate of Duke University and Harvard Law School, also serves as a partner at Jupiter, a Florida-based real estate finance fund with $3 billion in assets under management. In this conversation with Stanford associate professor Chuck Eesley, she explores how syndicates, platforms and digital networks are reshaping angel investing.

Modern Startup Funding (Y Combinator)

YC Partner and GC Carolynn Levy detail the basics of startup financing and how modern early-stage rounds of financing are done using convertible securities, like the SAFE.

• Pahnke, E. C., Katila, R., & Eisenhardt, K. M. (2015). Who takes you to the dance? How partners’ institutional logics influence innovation in young firms. Administrative Science Quarterly, 60(4), 596-633. And the authors discuss this finding at National Science Foundation Webinar:

• How different kinds of funding partners affect startups’ ability to innovate and its research brief.

• Guide on How to Get Investors for a Startup (SPD Load)

• How Students Can Launch And Fund Their Startup Ventures (AdvisorSmith)

• A Complete Guide to Your Small Business Funding Options (Guidant Financial)

• How to Get your Business Funded (Bplans)

• Private Investors for Startups: Everything You Need to Know (Startup.com)

• Venture Capital: What It Is & Why Use It (Startup.com)

• What Is An Angel Investor? (Startup.com)

• Different Types of Startup Funding (SPD Load)

• Funding Opportunities for Black-Owned Businesses (SCORE)

• 40 Proven Ways to Fund A Small Business (Bplans)

• How to Fuel Your Student-Led Startup (Business News Daily)

Click the link to find a Worldcat book record; enter a zipcode to check which library nearby has the book you can borrow. When the record is not available, a link to Amazon is provided.

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• Barber, Julie. Investor Ready. RETHINK Press, 2020. Print.

• Church, James. Investable Entrepreneur. S.l.: RETHINK PRESS, 2020. Print.

• Coffey, Adam. The Private Equity Playbook: Management's Guide to Working with Private Equity. 2019. Print.

• Cremades, Alejandro. The Art of Startup Fundraising: Pitching Investors, Negotiating the Deal, and Everything Else Entrepreneurs Need to Know. John Wiley & Sons, 2016. Print.

• Feld, Brad, and Jason Mendelson. Venture Deals: Be Smarter Than Your Lawyer and Venture Capitalist. 2019. Print.

• Kupor, Scott. Secrets of Sand Hill Road: Venture Capital and How to Get It. 2019. Print.

• Manahan, Michael S. Secrets to Rai$ing Capital: How to Get the Money You Need for Your Business the Fastest and Easiest Way Possible. 2011. Print.

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Mindset Founders Online Slack Community

Mindset Founders is an online Slack community dedicated and open to all Founders, from every industry and geography. Our intent is to assist Founders in better understanding their target investor audience, as well as to introduce prominent members of the early-stage investor community to our members via our Mindset Investor Interview Series. Through this process, Founders can learn about the different types of early-stage investors, which investors to engage, and how to engage them.

SCORE mentors offer financing-related consultation via video, email, phone, or in-person.

• Connect with Potential Investors

• Master Story Telling and Pitch the Ideas

• Secure Grants with a Concrete Proposal

• Haring, M. (2018). How Student Entrepreneurs Develop Their Social Network Over Time During the Process of Starting a Company. Business and Management Studies, 4(1), 68-80.

• Venturewell. (2020). The six biggest challenges faced by student entrepreneurs. https://venturewell.org/five-biggest-challenges/