NTC: How To Secure Funding

I went to the Nashville Technology Council’s roundtable on Venture Capital tonight. (see Venture Capitalists Reveal: How to secure Funding).

Courtney Ross did a great job moderating a conversation with Rachael Qualls (Angel Capital Group), Vic Gatto (Solidus Company), and Sid Chambless (Nashville Capital Network). It was a good overview of how venture and angel funding works, the questions startups need to be ready to answer, and what to expect during the process of getting funding.

Some of my takeaways from the event are:

  1. Vic really knows his stuff who has a vested interested in fostering a positive environment for startups in Nashville.
  2. I think Rachael has a lot of potential to build a solid network of early stage investors in Nashville.
  3. Everyone trying to raise money in Nashville should talk to Sid; he may not fund you, but he is likely to give you helpful feedback.
  4. The Nashville Technology Council seems to be getting more progressive. There were quite a few Nashville Geeks in attendance.

Frankly, raising money in Nashville for a non health care related technology startup sucks. There are not many institutions to seek out. However, the odds here don’t seem to be much different than what I have heard from Bay Area venture firms (say, 1 in 100 deals get funded). The good news is that there is a thriving tech startup community growing here. I know of at least 4 solid early stage startups that were in the room tonight. It was very different from the last NTC venture panel that I attended a couple of years ago.

I suspect Milt will have a more thorough write-up on Venture Nashville soon.

This entry was written by Jackson Miller, posted on November 6, 2008 at 11:28 pm, filed under Business, Nashville, Technology and tagged , , . Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post. Trackbacks are closed, but you can post a comment.