To all those Internet entrepreneurs whose hopes of raising venture capital for their business have just been dashed, here’s how to grow your business regardless of the economic crisis (and a real business at that). And to all those Internet entrepreneurs who have other money concerns… this applies to you too!

Quick background: we started our first Internet company in 1997 (an IT security company) and survived and thrived through the dot com crash. We later sold the company in 2002.

Because we started our business with no money (we were young and didn’t have any) except for a paltry $45,000 loan from family that quickly ran out since we used it to pay rent, buy furniture and live on… and because our tentative approaches to VCs never got anywhere… we had no choice but to work out how to make money fast.

And funnily enough, we managed to do so. So here are five (5) tips for bringing in the money when times are tough, based on what we did just a few years ago:

1. Work out what you can develop and sell to customers ASAP. All those big, long-term projects that rely on huge wads of cash you don’t have? Either put ‘em on the back burner while you focus on getting customers (not VCs) to pay you, or break ‘em into components so you can start selling at least one of those components within the next 6 months.
2. Focus more on marketing, less on product development. When the going gets tough, the tough start selling.
3. Focus on getting products out, rather than getting them perfect. Don’t compromise on quality of course, but you can incorporate all the ‘bells and whistles’ into later releases.
4. Cut down on all the nice-to-have-but-not-essential expenses. If it means bringing the business back into your house or garage, so be it.
5. (Optional) Keep in touch with your current or potential VCs. Funnily enough, taking all the above steps will not only help you build a real (profitable) business, but will help you prove to VCs that you have a real business and that you can get through the tough times. It’s resilient businesses like yours that VCs will prefer to invest in going forward.

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• How To Make $10 Million in Online Sales Per Year

This entry was posted on Friday, October 17th, 2008 at 12:08 am and is filed under Feature, Internet Marketing Niche, Venture Capital. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.