How to Leverage Alternative Funding Sources for Your Startup

Launching the Friends & Family event series

Friends and family play a vital role in a founder’s life. Not just for the emotional support they provide, but also the financial support. There is a general expectation that a startup should be funded through friends and family in the early stages, but that is simply not realistic for all founders, especially those from diverse backgrounds. For instance, the net worth of a typical white family is nearly ten times greater than that of a Black family, according to 2016 data from the Pew Research Center.

Grasshopper Bank and AWSM share a commitment to leveling the playing field and providing more founders with the support, information and connections they need to excel in their startup journey.

Given the current economic climate and record unemployment rates, entrepreneurship is a path considered by more and more founders. We hence created a new event series called “Friends & Family” which is focused on capital at the earliest stages. We will explore different paths to funding, the pros and cons and how to best pursue them.

We are covering the following funding sources as part of our series, :

• Pitch competitions: Many founders have used the money won from pitch competitions as a starting point to fund their business. Learn how to find and identify pitch competitions, how to determine whether a competition is a good fit, and best practices to increase your chances of winning.
• Accelerators: While building a startup has never been easy there are more resources than ever for Black founders and other founders of color. Accelerators are a common stepping stone for many in the journey to developing a meaningful technology company, but what does it take to enter and succeed in one? How far along do you need to be to enter? What does a founder need to look for? What does being in acceleration look like?
• Public Funding and Government Grants: There are many publicly funded programs available — but finding them and identifying whether they are right for you and your business can be confusing and there are things to watch out for to ensure you stay within compliance of the program’s terms.
• Corporate Funds: Corporations are announcing new initiatives tied to funding every day. We will explore how to evaluate various corporate initiatives and the best way to tap into this source of funding.
• Crowdfunding programs: As more and more underrepresented businesses find success on crowdfunding platforms we will compare the different platforms, what company stage correlates with the respective platforms, and when is the best time in a companies lifecycle to pursue this strategy.

For our first session, July 23rd at 4pm, we’re excited to host Nichelle McCall Browne. Nichelle is a former founder of Bold Guidance and now Bold Startups. She will join us for a discussion on how to leverage pitch competitions for funding, which opportunities are worth a founders’ time and best practices to streamline the application process.

Sign up here and please share with fellow founders in your network.

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — -

About Grasshopper Bank: Grasshopper is a national, digital-first business bank serving startup ecosystems across the US to help accelerate the success of entrepreneurs and investors at all stages of their journeys. Built by founders, for founders, Grasshopper offers a digital platform to help founders save time and money, provides the full stack of banking services you need and has experienced relationship managers to support you and your business.

About AWSM: AWSM is a venture development organization using design & technology to realize A World Serving Many, which is our “why” (AWSM). Helping underrepresented founders with A Way to Startup Mastery as a force for impact is our “how”.