Small Business and Entrepreneurial Funding

Great, you just had your AHA moment, probably in the shower. You yell Eureka. You just figured out the best new business idea you would like to pursue. Awesome. Now what? One important question is how will you fund this venture? The answer, of course, depends on the idea. Will a credit card suffice? Do you need help from friends and family? Or, perhaps an Angel Investor to help realize your dream.

J. Paul Solitario – Managing Partner at Cerium Capital LLC is someone that has lots of experience in Small Business and Entrepreneurial Funding and fortunately for us we had the opportunity to pinch a few minutes of his time to discuss this topic.

Winning Angels: Insight Into Entrepreneurial Financing: Part 1: Sourcing

Sourcing is the first of seven in a miniseries that is aimed at exploring the fundamentals of early- stage investing. Sourcing refers to identifying entrepreneurial projects that represent potential upside value and positive future returns.

One way to think about sourcing is to consider it as an evaluation tool that actively manages a balance between quality and quantity of potential investment opportunities. Hence, fine-tuning a successful sourcing strategy can prove be a great competitive advantage. Additionally, a successful sourcing strategy should maximize the time investment necessary to sift through hundreds, sometimes thousands, of investments each year.

Learning Communities

Consider the somewhat popular saying: “It’s good to learn from your mistakes. But, it is far better to learn from someone else’s mistakes.” Few would dare disagree. Generally speaking, we all like and take the easiest path (at least most of us). Learning is no exception to this rule. Learning from others, or in communities, is something that simply makes sense. Bearing in mind a relentless thirst for knowledge that is combined with the need to socialize  - we get Learning Communities.

Learning Communities (LC) is a relatively new term in academia. It dates back to 1980’s when Evergreen State College implemented the concept in order to focus on collaborative education (Tinto, V. 2003). It seems cool and appropriate for an increasing social environment we have immersed ourselves in via new web technologies. However, I would argue that the practice has been in use for a very long time. How long? Well probably as far back as learning itself.