Last night I watched Dragon's Den on BBC. They had a follow-up on the businesses that the Dragons had decided to invest in and the results were quite interesting.

A large number of the investments fell through after then show (down to due diligence or just simply people falling out) and quite a few of the entrepreneurs were still trading having found funds elsewhere. The Dragon's would insist that they may be trading but were they profitable, and I'm sure they're right in the main part.

Having recently been following a poll on Ecademy, How did you raise the last round of finance for your business? it seems that the majority of startups and growth business (65%) found their funding from friends, family and other sources (which is predominantly self financing). According to the poll, only 7% financed through Angel Investors, and 1% through VC's.

That certainly ties in with my own personal experience and the results of the Dragon's Den.

Many of the clients we work with on sales outsourcing and venturing projects are self financing.

Typically, we work with clients who are looking to expand from an existing (usually low) revenue base and so they want a low cost, shared-risk way of increasing sales. We don't work with everyone; we also have a selection criteria. In many ways we are similar to angel investors.

Maybe I should have called the firm Dragon Associates? ;-)

Labels: entrepreneurs, funding, sales, start-ups, venture capital