1.) As you are starting a business for the first time, what do you believe are the greatest personal obstacles to obtaining funds for your new business? Why? Based on your insight gained this week, where would you start looking for capital? What advice would you give an entrepreneur who was trying to finance a startup?

2.) reply to two student posts below.

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Lario Welsh,

As you are starting a business for the first time, what do you believe are the greatest personal obstacles to obtaining funds for your new business? Why? Based on your insight gained this week, where would you start looking for capital? What advice would you give an entrepreneur who was trying to finance a startup?

If I am starting a new business from the ground the first thing I would believe to need is obviously capital to start up the business. If I don’t have my own capital I would find investors to diverge into whatever business I have going on. I would start looking for capital as soon as I knew what business I wanted to start, where I wanted to start, and why I wanted to start. Advice I would give to any entrepreneur that would like to finance a business is look for ways for you be be as cost efficient as possible. Rather than just say, “I want to build a multi-million dollar company,” you need to break financial goals down into reachable and measurable ones. Monthly, weekly or even daily revenue goals allow you to stay on track and make the adjustments necessary for constant growth. You can even set milestones to hit along the way, giving you a lot of smaller goals to constantly hit. Knocking out little goals can give you the confidence needed to keep powering through the entrepreneurial journey.

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Avory Caruthers,

The greatest obstacle to obtaining funds for my business is not having a track record of entrepreneurial success. If a person doesn’t know how to manage a business well, then being financially set is going to be hard. Besides this, the other greatest obstacle faced in starting a new business is having a lack of personal capital. In order to rent a space, buy equipment, bring in new products, market and sell services, there needs to be some form of capital. Capital allows you to start and launch your business and pay for those expenses until revenue starts coming in. Every business requires one thing; money. This is why every business owner needs to start with some capital in order to pay for staff, equipment, products, etc. Without some form of capital, the business will be hard to start and keep running.

According to module 5 lecture chapter 12, there are many different areas to look at when trying to gain capital. “The Small Business Administration (SBA) does not make loan money but serves as a guarantor of loans through five basic programs.” A person might qualify for loans to help them financially by looking into these programs. Business angels also are a good place to look. They are “private individuals who invest in others’ entrepreneurial ventures.” Informal venture capital also is “funds provided by a wealthy private individual to high-risk ventures.” Another way to gain capital is crowdfunding which “ is the process of raising very small investments from a large number of investors.” There are so many different sources out there to help an entrepreneur gain capital. In my own business, I would start looking at the different loans and look at the different programs and investors who are willing to work and help me with loans and gaining capital.

The advice I would give to any entrepreneur is every penny counts! Learning to increase revenue while lowering expenses will be important to your business. Look for people who can provide lower or markdown prices making equipment and products cheaper. Find cheaper and easier ways to market your brand. Have well-trained staff who are skillful instead of hiring too many staff. The best advice is to start small and spend wisely! You don’t need to go overboard, especially at first. See what your consumers like and put money into that rather than a million different things that may end up a waste. Start small and build from there. Once the business grows and revenue is coming in, a budget will be figured out, and what to budget for and use that money for will be used wisely!