Momentum

Great advice-The 5 things you need to be thinking about right now

This week the Momentum crew met at The Factory our Wednesday night Speaker Dinner and had a great conversation with Brad MacLean, founder of Creative Byline. Brad shared his story and some great insight with the Momentum entrepreneurs.

Prior to launching Creative Byline in 2007, Brad spent 3 years as a consultant at Pfizer and 4 years as VP of Product Development at Herman Miller. Through the years Brad had discovered a passion for technology and a realization that the corporate life was not for him. It was also during this time that Brad’s wife, Christine, was in the process of having her first children’s book published. Brad witnessed the laborious processes of the publishing industry and decided that there must be a better way. This is when he tapped in to his passion for technology and entrepreneurial spirit to help update the publishing industries antiquated system with the creation of Creative Byline.

Brad describes Creative Byline as “match.com for book authors and publishers”. Writers submit manuscripts to their website where Create Byline works directly with publishers to streamline the process of manuscript submission. With Creative Byline, writers can easily get their work in front of interested editors. Editors at participating publishing houses can bypass manuscript overload to spend more time on those that match what they’re looking for.

Today, Creative Byline has over 3000 writer members and 12 publishers. But ,Brad’s success has not come without a lot of hard work. In addition to spending the last 3 years perfecting his business model, he has been relentlessly pitching to investors to help grow his business. He has also gained a lot of wisdom and shared 5 points that the Momentum start-ups need to start thinking about right now.

5-Make as much progress as you can before raising any more money; investors like to see this.

4-Raising money is a full time job; it can take 50 to 75 percent of your time. It takes 6 to 8 months to raise $250K in West Michigan and you will most likely continue to raise money until you are cash flow positive. Identify a chief fundraiser on your team while someone else focuses on building your business at the same time.

3-Find a good attorney-someone who has been through the start-up investment more than once. You will need someone with this experience to take you through multiple rounds of investment.

2-Fund raising is a huge network. All of the investors know each other, but they do not tell you. He also advised not to waste time trying to meet investors at entrepreneurial conferences. His best experiences have been one-on-one
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1-You will attract investors by demonstrating growth and value proposition. You need to show that someone is willing to pay for what you have to offer. Work on attracting paying customers prior to pitching to investors.

Thanks for the advice Brad!