175: Raising Hardware Funding via an Angel Investor

Larry Richenstein has been in the hardware sales, development, and investment world for over 40 years. He is an angel investor in the New York Angels network and is currently the CEO of WePower Technologies, his latest hardware venture. Today Larry is going to share some valuable knowledge for inventors, startups, and small manufacturers on what angel investing is, what stages of development you need to get your product to in order to pitch to a professional angel investor, and how to do a good pitch once you are in the door.

Today you will hear us talk about:

An angel investor is usually an independent investor or a group of investors that invest in startup businesses.

Angel investing are considers 

Angel investment is the first round, then venture capital.

When it comes to products, there is a lot more that goes into them from a product development standpoint.

Measure twice, cut once.

You have to have all the development

People that have ideas, get no funding.

People that come up with a rough prototype or a rough prototype, it’s interesting but generally still too early.

What investors really want to see, is a working prototype.

De-risking the investment occurs the further you push the product down the road.

First, find angels that invest in hardware.

Angel investors for hardware are out there.

Come in with a pitch that proves that you have a strong likelihood of success

Hardware and software are starting to come together.

Crowdfunding is a powerful way to prove market validity.

You no longer have to build for the masses, you can build for niche industries.

Avoid feature creep, especially for your first version.

Crowdfunding is a way to avoid outside investors.

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