Guest Speaker John Dimmer

Last week we were visited by a seasoned entrepreneur and angel investor, John Dimmer, who gave and inspiring speech on entrepreneurship.  Dimmer spoke about the long hours and hard work that an entrepreneur must put into a start-up for it to be successful.  Though, at times, his speech painted the life of an entrepreneur as being bleakly driven by the sheer desire to succeed the majority of his talk was an inspiration to rise to the occasion and join the ranks of the successfully self-employed.  Dimmer spoke about funding a start-up company.  He quickly dismissed the notion of rushing to a venture capital firm to acquire large sums of money and, in fact, to be wary of a venture capitalist's attempt to extract business data.  Dimmer mainly focused on the primary source of initial funding; founders, friends, and family members before moving to angel's and angel groups for secondary funding.  Dimmer also spoke about when and why it is appropriate to seek outside funding.  The basic concept is that you only seek funding to reach the next milestone (which could include bootstrapping the company.)  Dimmer reminded us to be mindful of our audience when obtaining new funds and suggested ways for new entrepreneurs to capitalize on niche funding groups such as those that only invest in new technologies or companies owned by females or other business minority groups.