Getting Over an Impasse: Pursue Funding Now or Later?
Last week I dealt with an impasse related to a start-up’s decision to pursue funding now (my preference) or 6-9 months later. The founder is being advised by one group to wait until a new sales approach bears fruit before pursuing angel funding. My take is that he has enough of a business case for funding now mainly due to recent success penetrating a large account. Also, the funding is needed to do a professional sales and marketing effort. The exact rationale is not important but the process used to break the impasse is interesting.
The founder suggested that I summarize our conversation on the issue and email it to the opposition group. The funding-later side responded defensively but also revealed some fundamental misunderstandings about the new sales approach that was holding things up. I ignored the response and let everything stew for a couple of days. This, it turned out, was a crucial bit of patience that led to a successful outcome.
The founder was surprised by the defensive email causing him to seek out more advice from his interim CFO, communicate with another person more likely to agree with him in the opposition group, and is now pursing a different path.
What’s interesting about this is that an outcome, that might have taken weeks to arrive at, occurred so quickly. How would you have handled a similar situation? What impasse has caused your funding project to be delayed? Do you feel that email in this situation was a “poor” way to communicate? Should all parties have gotten on the phone to discuss this?
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