What's the best way to raise money for a new small business as an entrepreneur?

Question

What's the best way to raise money for a new small business as an entrepreneur?

Answer 1

I recently heard of a new service called 40billion.com which claims to be the friends & family funding network for entrepreneurs. I know that many small business entrepreneurs start out by raising money from friends & family because they can't get a bank loan with no credit or revenue history as a startup. Also, these entrepreneurs can't go to institutional angel investors or venture capitalists (VC) because they only need to raise less than $100K, whereas angels and VCs start at $500K+. If you're raising money for a small business, then friends & family might be the way to go, and you should probably try 40billion.com then.

There are some other person-to-person or peer-to-peer (P2P) lending websites too, where you can get loans from ordinary strangers, but you might have to disclose too much of your private information, and they check your credit. These are Prosper, LendingClub, and GlobeFunder, but I read that they recently got scolded by the SEC. And they don't appear to be targeted at helping entrepreneurs.

Hope this helps!