It was a great deal of fun visiting NYU-Poly’s technology business incubator in Manhattan this morning. We learned about the purpose of an incubator from its manager, Samir. He went into great detail the number of ways they can help the “start-up” company and the expectations that are placed on these hopeful entrepreneurs. We were then visited by representatives from two start-up companies. One presenter discussed a new means to charge electricity-driven delivery trucks (and other large vehicles). The other presenter discussed a software product that helps teachers communicate to parents their child's absentee issues. We returned to the NYU-Poly in the afternoon to discuss the many ways or types of investors available to the entrepreneur to produce and market a product or service. We then met in teams to discuss how to acquire the necessary capital to bring new ideas to market.

Today, after learning about the extensive resources available via NYU-Poly's business incubators, we continued our journey of connecting technology with entrepreneurship by learning how to raise funds. Many, though not all, of the start ups at the NYU-Poly incubators are companies, which means they have already started this very important process.

It is recommended that the process of raising funds start with family and friends as future investors will be interested not only in how much of your own money you were willing to risk, but also if you were able to convince family and friends to risk their money for your great idea. Next, funds can be sought from bank/finance companies, government agencies, such as the Small Business Administration, and crowdfunding sources such as Kickstarter and Lending Club.

In addition, you can look to various types of angel investors, who typically invest their own funds, or venture capitalists, who typically invest the pooled funds of others, such as pension fund monies. They do this in exchange for partial ownership. Once you have raised enough capital to get your business up and running successfully the chain then moves to how you plan to maintain/grow it. Two options are going public, which means the public becomes your partner, or getting acquired by a larger company.

All the ways of raising and maintaining funds come with pros and cons, which should be weighed as you make the tough decisions needed to make and keep your business a success.