Session 5:
Financing Sources Panel;
Financial Projections
Wednesday, January 29, 2025
6:00pm to 9:00pm Eastern Time, Room: 10-250

Part 1: Financing Sources Panel

You have identified the product/service and the market.   You have settled on a business model and have done your financial projections.    How will you finance the plan?

This session will cover: Bootstrapping the early stages.   Funding from the 3 F's- Friends, Family and Fools.   Angels- who are they and what are they looking for?   Private placements.   Customer financing.  Government grants (e.g., SBIRs).   Consulting- getting someone else to pay for the development, provide a beta site and endorse your idea.   Venture capital.   Bank financing.

You will learn about the institutional constraints and needs of various funding sources.   As a result you will be in a better position to determine if, when and how to approach these sources for financing.

This part of the program will feature a panel of experts discussing different financing sources.

• Nilanjana Bhowmik, Founder & General Partner, Converge
• Mary Tobin, Principal, Liberty Mutual Strategic Ventures
• Drew Volpe, Founder / Managing Partner First Star Ventures.
• Joshua Wachman, Serial entrepreneur turned early stage investor.

Experienced Technology Innovator and Investor John is the Founder & Managing Director of Two Lanterns Venture Capital, and also the Co-Founder & Former 10-year CEO of MassChallenge, largest startup accelerator on the planet which has graduated 3,000+ startups with cumulative revenue of $billions and over 200,000 jobs.   He also won the MIT $50K in 2007 with Robopsy.  LinkedIn Page

Video of Presentation:
Presentation Slides:	No Slides Were Presented

• Where Do Entrepreneurs Get Their Money?  Short YouTube video about financing sources.
• A Beginner's Guide to Venture Capital  How is a Venture Capital Fund structured?  How are VCs compensated?  What does this mean for you?
• Venture Capital Deal Terms  MIT Enterprise Forum presentation.
• "Thinking About Valuation"
• "Dilution – Here Is A Primer of Stock Vocabulary"
• "All Financing Sources Are Not Equal"
• "What Are the Terms? - Part 1: A Preferred Return"
• "What Are the Terms?- Part 2: Investors Need Some Control After Their Checks Are Cashed"
• "What Are the Terms?- Part 3: Run Don’t Walk To The Exit"
• 2023 Angel Funders Report, from the Angel Capital Association

Part 2: Financial Projections

Armed with an understanding of the market for your product or service how do you figure out what financial resources you will need to bring a it to that market?   This portion of the program will introduce some financial projection techniques based on actual business experience.

• Chapter 10, "Figuring Out Financials" and Chapter 11, "Forecasting and Budgeting" from Tiffany, Paul and Peterson, Steven, Business Plans for Dummies, IDG Books Worldwide.   Students Registered For Credit See, Course Reader for excerpts.
• Download a copy of the Financial Template shown in the lecture.
• Download a copy of the Equity Distribution and Dilution spreadsheet shown in the lecture.

Entrepreneur, Senior Executive and Senior Advisor for technology-based ventures Steve has been senior executive in venture-backed software and semiconductor companies, working in strategic marketing roles to place breakthrough semiconductor, MEMS, Nanotechnology and software innovations into the right early market segments. LinkedIn Page

Video of Presentation:
Presentation Slides:	Financial Projections