While AgTech entrepreneurs are full of energy and enthusiasm, many struggle to attract meaningful capital to their companies. The struggle is often due to inexperience and a lack of understanding of how to present their business models to sophisticated, high-quality institutional capital. The term “high-quality capital” refers to investors with sufficient available capital to finance fledgling businesses or projects through self-sufficiency and beyond, and who can and will provide advice and support as the business or project grows.
The purpose of this post is to provide a road map—or a way of thinking—to guide those entrepreneurs in approaching institutional capital (or all capital, for that matter) and being successful in doing so. Following this road map will yield several secondary benefits for the entrepreneur, including increased preparedness to address the financial and operational challenges associated with the business or project, as well as a framework to contextualize feedback received from potential financial sponsors.