178: Venture Capital Funding for Hardware Startups

Toph Day is the CEO of Elevate Ventures, a Venture Capital firm that has many hardware companies in its portfolio of over $220 million of investments under management. He has founded 8 companies with over $600 million in transactions over the past 30 years. Today Toph is going to share some valuable knowledge for inventors, startups, and small manufacturers on what venture capital funding is, if VC funding is right for you, and some advice on how to plan for and pitch your hardware startup to VC firms.

Today you will hear us talk about:

Venture capital is later stage, more sophisticated, and usually beyond 

Make your pitch and plan to be very tight.

It is important understand what your venture capital firm invests.

Make sure the venture capital firm invests in hardware technology.

Relationship build with your investors about a year in advance.

Keep your pitch to the pitch, don’t embellish

Structure of Venture Capital funding

When you start your company, start with a very clean legal structure.

Use a convertible note for your investors

When raising capital, check out all the programs and grants available

Don’t include grants as revenue

Hardware startups can grow to be successful slowly

You can also grow hardware companies much quicker 

Surround yourself with partners, rely more on partners than hiring.

Prototypes require multiple iterations

Narrow and deep plays into hard tech, keep the product’s first version simple

EPISODE LINKS:

Toph Day Links:

LinkedIn | Elevate Ventures | Rally Conference

The Product Startup Podcast Links:

https://www.ProductStartup.com/

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Mako Design Links:

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Kevin Mako Links:

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