Funding your dream: five ways to land a 6 million round.

• Author: Blake, Brock
• Position: Money Talk

Last year, we were fortunate to land two incredible VC partners in Highway 12 Ventures and GSA Venture Partners. The story and path to closing the deal was an adventure and experience in and of itself. Since closing, many people have asked about details. Here is the story, and five tips for people trying to secure similar funding.

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1. Build a Great Business

   First thing is first. I don't care how strong your pitch is, if you don't have a solid business to pitch, you aren't going to raise venture capital. My advice to other entrepreneurs looking to raise capital is to build a great business first, then go find the investors--not the other way around. Here are a few attributes of a great business:

   * Huge market with lots to gain

   * Solid team (no matter how big or small) that can execute

   * Proven customer demand

   * Strong knowledge of key business model metrics and how to scale those metrics

   * Scalable model and/or technology

2. Pitch Everyone

   Raising money is similar to a sales funnel. There is no secret sauce (although there are certainly shortcuts) and you can't be bashful. During our fundraising process, we pitched groups from all over the United States, including Utah, Idaho, Northern California, Southern California, New York, Chicago and Boston. Here is a typical "sales funnel" approach to raising money. You'll need to

   * Pitch 100 VCs to ...

   * Land 50 meetings to ...

   * Get 25 VCs to do a deep dive to ...

   * Get 10 VCs in due diligence to ...

   * Get five interested in doing the deal to ...

   * Land two or three term sheets.

3. It's Not Closed Until It's Closed

   We had to learn this lesson the hard way. After a few weeks of pitching, we had a term sheet from an incredible VC group and were only a few weeks away from landing the deal. Everything had moved quickly and smoothly, and we were excited to finalize and move forward.

   However, about two weeks prior to closing, the VC group had a "blow up" within the firm and the partner leading our deal suddenly and unexpectedly resigned from the firm. This was a huge setback to us because we were changing our strategic plans with a near-term closing in mind. I'm sure you can imagine how it had a negative impact on our management team and employees, and we had to figure out how to rebound and keep things moving forward. Thankfully for us, we had other VCs that were interested and we were able to pick things back up with them.

4. Leverage Your Fans

   Our deal was led by Glenn Michael and the...