We live in a hyper-connected and fast-twitch world, so why does it seem that funding your growing tech business happens at the speed of clunky typewriters? In our daily lives, delay can be annoying and frustrating. But for entrepreneurs who are out hustling to land business deals, waiting months to receive funding can mean the difference between hockey-stick growth and failure. When Speed Matters horribly slow, inefficient, and distracting process. You can easily spend six, n

Venture capital funding is to tech startups what the Wizard of Oz is to Dorothy — a longed-for solution to a central problem, imbued with a sense of power and even magic. Many startup founders see snagging VC funding as a major goal. But many end up finding that VCs are too often what Dorothy discovers the Wizard to be: a chimera — extremely difficult to access and possessed of some major drawbacks. Here are six reasons that getting VC funding isn’t always the most constructi

Next to deciding to start a business of your own, how you will fund its growth might be the biggest financial decision you will make. The type of funding you choose (or don’t choose) will fundamentally impact the trajectory of your business and, ultimately, the value you extract from it. Whichever way you go, the process of raising capital will be full of ups and downs. It will most likely take way more energy, time and resources than you anticipated. With that in mind, here

If you’re a startup founder, sooner or later you’ll likely want to deliver a bang-up pitch to someone whose support you seek. Whether you’re making your case to a venture capitalist, angel investor, banker, startup accelerator, or even just rich old Uncle Morty, you’ll need to put your best foot forward. Some of the audiences you’ll pitch to—like VCs and angels—are famously hard to read. Their decision-making may be based as much on hunches or inspirations as it is on hard fa

Knowify had what many SaaS startups dream about: an offer of VC funding. But the project-management software company’s response was less than enthusiastic: A firm “no thanks” sent the big money packing, leaving CEO Marc Visent to grow his company as he pleased and keep all his equity for his team. “Some companies are a perfect fit for a Series A, and some companies are not and need other funding options,” Visent recently told Lighter Capital CIO Allen Johnson. For Knowify, th

InsureSign, an e-signature startup founded in 2011 that competes successfully with some major tech companies, recently received some awesome kudos. G2 Crowd, the world’s leading business solutions review website, ranked the company number one for its usability and customer support in its Summer 2018 Report on e-signature software. Lighter Capital funded InsureSign in 2017, which allowed the company to create its first dedicated sales team in order to grow aggressively in 2018

Last October, Visible.vc came to Lighter Capital looking for an injection of capital to scale their business. The Chicago-based company creates tools that simplify stakeholder relations, communication, and ongoing performance tracking for more than 1,600 businesses. Just 15 days after CEO Mike Preuss’s first phone call with the Lighter team, the company received a tranche of funding directly wired to their bank account. For those used to the typical six-to-nine-month process

Seeking funding for your startup? Of course, you know you’ll need to present your financials to prospective investors. But what does that mean, exactly? While there’s no one formula for how to lay out your numbers, there are some basic elements that you should include, even if just on a single slide in your pitch deck. But of course if funders are interested in your business, you’ll need to get more detailed. Here are the basics you’ll need to provide no matter what stage of