The vast majority of people who decide to start a business do not fund the entire project out of pocket.  There is much to afford in those initial years, which means that most will look to banks, private investors, or both, in order to cover the costs.  Unfortunately, recent news has made it apparent that many small businesses will find it much more difficult to get bank funding in the near future.

The reports were based on research into the lending habits of banks in major cities throughout the US.  It was discovered that the number of bank loans provided to small businesses dropped by 60 percent in just 7 years’ time.  The story was covered in multiple publications, including this article posted by the Public News Service.  The author went further, suggesting that the loans were particularly difficult to come by in the lower income areas. 

Most businesses rely on funding like this in order to hire staff, to cover the costs of building up inventory, and to launch marketing campaigns intended to grow the company. The good news, though, is that banks are not the only providers of business loans.  Private investors – angel investors — do exist and they are regularly seeking new money-making ventures.  That is good news for the start-ups that are desperate for the capital the banks are unwilling to dole out.

There are many articles that are intended to give these businesses tips on finding and attracting investors, but the truth is that exposure will be the key.  Whether working in the health & technology sectors, or focusing on a niche of animal lovers, exposure can be found at the ifestival.  The invention convention aims to explore the best in innovation and invention.  Here, investors walk amongst experienced business owners and brilliant minds.  An invention conference can be the perfect place to discuss business ideas while discovering the newest idrone or the best in ivirtual reality.

With banks making it more and more difficult for startup to get the funding they need, an iseminar may be the best way for small businesses to network with potential investors.

There seem to be lots of buzz words when it comes to the world of small business today. One of the biggest? Company culture. You’re likely to read extensively about how to build a company culture, whether your company culture is in the right place, and how to adjust your company culture. If you’re not sure where to begin, though, this guide can help you take a closer look at just what your company culture might be.

Toward a Definition

Company culture – what does it actually mean? Broadly defined, it’s that vision you have for your company. It’s the values that are ingrained in your organization. While your team members can certainly shape that culture, the simple reality is that you created it the moment you created your company.

Taking a Closer Look

If you’re not sure what kind of culture your company has right now, it’s time to do a bit of examination. Look at how your employees are behaving toward each other and toward your customers. What does the work they do for your company actually mean to them? It’s a bit like an episode of Undercover Boss. Your goal is to understand what’s actually at play in the day to day business of your company. While you built the foundation, the company itself may be taking a shift you didn’t intend.

Creating Something Stronger

The key, whether you’re happy with your company culture or you want something a bit different, is to continually work on that company culture. You’ll want to refine mission statements, values, and your goals. Clarify your purpose, and make sure your employees buy into it for real company success.

Looking for help coming up with the right company culture? Searching for the innovations that could change everything? Join us for the iFestival!

Innovation – it’s the key to helping small businesses move forward, but most don’t even know how to begin, much less apply their ideas to their companies. Here are a easy few ways you could be innovating now.

1. Add Fresh Thought: The most successful teams continually find fresh thoughts to help add those necessary innovations. It’s that out-of-the-box thinking that creates success. Whether you hire new team members who aren’t necessarily part of the norm in your industry, look to your customers for ideas, or even run a social media campaign to get a few new ideas, you should be consistently adding new thoughts to your company.
2. Eliminate: The world of business actually tends to thrive when things get lean. Wondering why? It helps you focus on the core of your product or service, so ask yourself what you could take out of the equation to make things stronger, then move in that direction. For example, long before Amazon started selling books, people went to physical stores to shop for them. Amazon took the store out of the “book store,” and it changed the print industry forever. What can you shake up through elimination?
3. Revisit History: Just because the world is a different place today than it was forty years ago doesn’t mean that history has nothing to offer your company. Take a look at what your company might have been decades ago. Revisit ideas that worked then that you might be able to adapt to today’s culture, and you may have a big win on your hands.

Ideas like these give you a solid starting place, but you need a way to handle these ideas before you start generating those. Create a team that vets these ideas for viability, then implements them prior to your innovation generation tactics. Adding the infrastructure before the ideas means you’ll be able to bring them to your customers far faster than you’d ever imagined.

From the very beginning of your business, you likely know that you’re going to have to make a pitch at some point in time. After all, it’s a must when you’re trying to get the financing you need to create a real success, but the act of making the presentation is tough. Here are three mistakes you don’t want to make.

1. Ignoring the Research: If you’re about to make a scheduled pitch, the single best thing you can do is make sure you know to whom you’re pitching. Understand the past investments the individual (or company) has made, and make certain there’s no conflict of interest in terms of other investments. Feel free to customize the presentation to meet those stated goals of your investor. Take a look at the Twitter feed. Understand the inner workings of your investors’ business so you can better tailor your presentation.
2. Poorly Demonstrating Market Opportunity: We’ve mentioned this in previous blog posts. No one wants to invest in a company that has little to no market opportunity available. Just because you have fifty of your closest friends and family members interested in your product doesn’t mean it will actually sell. Let your investors know (almost immediately) how your business can become really big. You want a look at the big picture here to present to your potential investor. If there’s no addressable market, you’re already out of the game.
3. Having Too Much Information: If you’ve packed your PowerPoint with fifty slides or your business plan is more than a hundred pages in length, it may be time to boil things back down to basics. Boring is out. Investors want exciting pitches with information they can sink their teeth into. At most, you have an hour, and that’s only if the first ten minutes go well. Information overload can be just as deadly to your presentation as not having enough data.

Attend iFestival, and you’re going to have a chance to make those pitches that will get your company off the ground this year!

Angel investors can certainly be a lifesaver for entrepreneurs, and they’re an increasingly common source of funding. Last year, nearly $24.1 billion in startup cash came from angel investors, and that leads many with ideas of shaking up the business world with a taste for these great investment opportunities. Before you can get an angel investor, though, it’s important to understand what they’re actually looking for in a company. A recent Forbes article outlined several. Here are just a few of the highlights.

• Serious Passion: Some people want to create a business. For others, though, creating that business becomes an absolute obsession. They have excitement and enthusiasm others just don’t, and they’re committed to making it work in any possible way. Those are the people angel investors want to work with. That passion has to come out in everything you do for your company, and if it does, it will certainly show.
• A Market Opportunity: It’s unfortunate, but there’s not a need for every product created. If there’s no clear market opportunity available that may provide a serious payoff, angel investors are far less likely to be interested in a startup. While you may see the opportunity, simply having ten of your best friends interested in buying the product doesn’t represent a real chance at it taking off in the near future.
• A Business Plan: Sure, many businesses are created every day without a business plan. While it is possible to run a startup with no plan in place, it’s not going to be possible to get the funding you need without that plan. They want to see that you know where you’re going with your products. You have to be able to demonstrate that with a formal business plan, or they’re going to move on to the next company.

It’s tough to know whether an angel investor might be interested in your product, but there’s one way to attract a bit more attention – iFestival. Book your opportunity to meet with the best angel investors now!

Nearly every company begins a new year with a very long list of resolutions, and whether it’s just you or a small start-up crew, the chances are good you have some serious resolutions, too. If the list gets too long, though, it can get pretty overwhelming. Take a harder look at your list. What should you leave on? What should you eliminate? Take a peek at a few goals any new business should have this year.

• A Stronger Financial Position: From improving your credit to having a stronger monthly budget, you need a solid financial position moving into this year. Do what you can to understand how the money in your company is working.
• Better Support for Your Team: Find out what your team really needs to move forward. It could be a morale booster or even another team member. No matter what it may be, though, identifying it and providing it could mean a far stronger year.
• Don’t Lose Sight of You: Keep in mind that you don’t have to be in this journey alone, and your business doesn’t make or break you. Focus a bit, find a way to embrace the personal side of you, and insist that your entire team does the same.
• Connect With Others: Attend iFestival this year and connect with other professionals in the same boat you are so you can move your business forward and make the changes necessary to build a stronger company.

Creating a start-up can be nothing short of amazing. It can also be wholly draining. In most cases, you’re not going to have a cheerleading squad on staff to help you get through your days, and the chances are good that you’re going encounter problems that will easily kill your drive and make you wish you simply hadn’t bothered. Building a start-up is complex. It’s a rollercoaster ride of emotions, and they’re often fairly negative ones. If you feel like your company is missing something, you’re probably not alone. Here are a just a few of the things that can drag you under.

• You’ve Lost Your Vision to Profit Talk: In the world of business, you’re going to hear a lot about profits and how your business is doing. What you may not spend a lot of time discussing, though, is the vision that built your company. Of course you need cash to grow, but if you lose that vision, you lose the reason you’re in the business. Sure, investors want to hear about profits, but your team and your customers want to hear the passion that keeps them in the game.
• You’re Not Moving: A football team can strategize on the sidelines all day long, but if they never hit the field to execute that strategy, they’ll never score any points. If your business is so busy strategizing that you never make it to the field, you’re going to burn out in a hurry. Start doing business fast, and begin moving forward instead of just talking about how you’re going to get there.
• You’re Missing a Connection: People make the business world go ’round, and if you’re not connected with the right people, you’re probably feeling that lost connection. Take the time to establish the connections you need at iFestival this year, and watch your business grow.

The iFestival encourages new technology, innovations that can make life simpler and easier as well as ideas that will change the state of the world overall. What may seem like a crazy little gadget could mean fresh water for villages in third world countries, increased protection for endangered wildlife, or food free of bacterial contamination. iFestival encourages those with the brains and vision to make the technologies become realities by making connections at the festival and signing up for demonstration time slots. Don’t let the opportunity to change our world pass you by. For inspiration check out some of these innovators of change that are changing how we see the world today.

• According the National Geographic Magazine Opthamologist Andrew Bastawrous of the United Kingdom developed an eye check system that can be used through smart phones. These systems are currently being implemented in Sub-Saharan Africa and other remote areas around the world.

• Microloans for women’s startups in India and Africa. Small investments are used to help women create small businesses to support themselves and their families. Without these microloans they would remain impoverished.

• The Hyperloop which is a mode of transportation consisting of two tubes that transport passenger pods at speeds of around 700 mph. The Hyperloop has been touted as a combination train/airplane and could very well be the transportation of the future.

• Bioprinting is a fairly new and innovative technology changing the health field as we know it. New cells for organ transplants and bone tissue are being printed with the use of 3D printers.

• Virtual reality glasses on being manufactured and sold by most leading tech companies such as Google and Samsung. These virtual tools can change the world of education and job training, military tactics, and even the potential to increase the possibility of space travel and exploration.

The fairly new term angel investor may not be one that every startup is familiar with but it should be. Angel investors invest early on in a startup’s beginning and gain an equity ownership interest. Angel investors should not be confused with venture capitalists as venture capitalists put forward larger amounts of money usually no less than $1 million and consist of a larger business entity, Angel investors are more likely to speak personally with the entrepreneur they invest in and see them through the beginning stages of the startup process. While venture capitalists can get you through the end process of production and sales; angel investors are necessary to get the ball rolling and tend to stay invested throughout the entire cycle. The following are important to understanding what angel investments can do for your startup.

• Angel investors are likely to invest amounts from $25,000-$100,000. The amount can be more but the money invested is more than likely personal money not money from a business investment group.

• Your startup will need multiple angel investors to see you through the beginning stages of marketing, research, and production.

• Angel investors are interested in your product and in you as an entrepreneur. They want to know and understand your values and philosophies before deciding to invest. They are investing in more than just your innovation.

• Your business model and long-term planning/goals also matter to angel investors. These investors want to be involved for the long-haul and need to know your goal extends past the first round of production and sales.

• Angel investors want to hear more than a pitch or idea they need to see a working prototype of the new technology or innovation before investing. Going on your pitch of what it will be like or what it can do is just not enough.

While gathering enough investments may seem time consuming it is well worth your time to take meetings with potential angel investors, answer all questions, and be prepared with investment numbers and projections. These investors could be the catapult to success your startup needs.

The iFestival is a one of a kind experience showcasing inventions and innovations in all areas from personal technology to film and music. The iFestival was created with the idea to bring together investors and innovators with the intent to get new products and ideas on the market and mainstream. This multi day experience includes innovator and vendor booths, film festival, music, and even innovative food and drinks. This festival is truly all about the “i” for innovation, invention, and investment.

Located in Laughlin, NV,the iFestival is set on the river giving potential investors the opportunity to check out the startups and inventions being showcased at the festival. It’s all about innovation and taking the next step toward new technologies and businesses that can change our lifestyles and culture all for the better. Innovations aren’t just limited to gimmicks and gadgets as The iFestival also features new and innovative filmmaking exploring new filming techniques and experimental set and camera design.

The iFestival also includes seminars for getting your startup noticed and best ways to seek out investors attention and get them to invest fully in you and your vision. Other activities include several opportunities for networking such as a river cruise, morning run, evening bonfire, and icostume fashion show. Enjoy entertainment from some of the biggest names in music. Each event gives both investors and innovators a chance to explore options of interest and gain new contacts to further both startups and profits. On trend offerings of food and drink including microbrews and large wine selections will help fuel your minds and bodies while exploring all that The iFestival has to offer.

The future of innovation involves experimentation and the opportunity to shatter old stereotypes ushering in a new world of triumphs and cultural change destined to change the way we think, feel, believe, and live.