Many entrepreneurs spend big chunks of time seeking money for their start-up. Whether it’s the chase after a VC or walking through bank lobby after bank lobby, finding that money becomes a full-time job. The entrepreneur thinks they’re starting their dream venture, but, months in, they realize: the money, not their great business idea, has become their full-time business. Raising money and starting a business are two different things. The one may be essential to the other, but this fact is inescapable: the time you spend getting that money takes you away from the tasks you need to do to start your venture and earn money. It’s easy to become distracted by the business of raising money, and that involves as big a strategic change in the company as changing your product or service. (Just often a less intentional change.) Marketing people make decks. Executives practice pitches. Finance people fill in applications and produce slightly different financial forecasts. It’s a full-time job: making a product, with a customer. That’s why so many entrepreneurs are comfortable with the process. And that’s why so many entrepreneurs get distracted by it. The search for funding means doing the same activities they planned to do, just with a different audience. Heck, the message is the same – look at this great stuff we do! But don’t get confused: raising money is not your business. Starting your business is your business. The raising money game has a gotcha at the end: once you’ve done it, you’ve got a chunk of cash, not life-sustaining revenue. I spend a lot of time with clients trying to help them identify the right kind of financing for their business. The right kind of financing is the money that matches your needs, your strengths, and your resources. I discovered this myself a few years ago, when I was starting a food company. We went for an SBA loan, and got offers – just not enough money, because there wasn’t enough collateral available to cover the size loan we were looking for. We could’ve known that beforehand, and sought out other kinds of funding; instead, we spent about 3 months full-time on loans, and didn’t get an inch closer to launched for it. There’s a lot of lessons like that in financing: don’t go for a bank loan if you don’t have collateral. If you’re a great networker, go after VCs. If you need an entrée into a domain, pursue Angel money. If your business needs ongoing cash resources, find a factor. I’ll get more into the different kinds of financing and whom they might be right for in a later entry. But the point is: if you have a good plan, then you know how much money you need, when you need it, when you’ll need it again, what your personal strengths and resources are, and what you need beyond money. If you look at raising money through that lens, then the chase after funding can become closer to being part of your business launch, not the pursuit of a different line of business.