No entrepreneur needs to remind her counterpart that living in the material world is feast or famine. The same principle applies to securing funding for your start up venture. When you need to borrow it is not available. When you are flush with offers from angel investors, banks, or venture capitalists, you are not likely to need it. A FORMER STUDENT (and first-time entrepreneur) HAS A GREAT E-COMMERCE business model. Yet he cannot find $100,000 in seed funding for his early stage venture. This former international student is smart but not well connected, even though he has secured some good development/programming talent at a bargain rate.

Another successful entrepreneur “snapped his fingers” at a few venture firms and secured a preferential term on his seed financing and first round without having to shop his business plan/model. In the world of venture financing, it really is who you know and what you have done in the recent past. Is that so different from succeeding anywhere else?