You Want to Start a Business — How Should You Finance It?
Getting a small business off the ground is a huge achievement, but establishing financing on a solid footing is critical to whether an enterprise ultimately succeeds or fails.
As a banking officer dealing with financing requests every day, the most common question I hear from founders of startups is, “Should I finance with equity or debt?” I’m here to tell you, there are no pat answers. And even worse, it can be a life and death decision: More than 500,000 businesses are established in America annually but half of them fail within five years. The No. 1 reason for failure is a bad strategy backed by surplus optimism, but the next biggest cause of failure is a lack of funding.