Knowledge about funding and funds are not very often within the core competence of entrepreneurs. They are dependent on support to identify the right investors. 

Different type of investors act upon different markets. The best way to get to understand and know investors and funds is to join a incubator, accelerator, science park or a business supporting department within a municipality. Most european countries also have business supporting organisations on a national or regional level. 

All of them have extensive networks of investors. 

Most funding efforts done by entrepreneurs is done in collaboration with a skilled, reliable and trusted business designer.

To develop and evaluate the desirability of the value proposition by the targeted customer segment we work and develop the value proposition, build the relations to retain the customer and establish the channels to acquire the customers.

We have to find out the feasibility to produce and deliver the product. Doing this we identify key activities, identify and develop key resources and establish key partnerships.

Finally we have to evaluate the viability of our business model and do the figures by identifying and develop potential  revenue streams and cost structure. 

Within each of the three sections in the BMC you need to carry out different activities and these will require different resources. Planning of activities need to be kept on both short term and long term basis. Creating a development budget, in collaboration with a skilled business designer, taking the planned activities into account is a good starting point. 

A well reasoned activity plan is a necessity to be able to create a development budget.

Aspects you need to take into account is:

• When do we need to carry out the activity, short term – longterm
• What kind of resources does the activity need?
  
• Is it a service?
• Is it some equipment or other hardware (software)?
• Is it knowledge or skills?

When having a activity plan you will be able to calculate the costs of carrying out the plan as well as creating a timeline of when to carry out the different activities.

Short term needs to be quite accurate and long term might be somewhat more general.  Dependent of type of start-up you need to make a year based development budget which is broken down into months. 

The development budget will state your need of resurces and when they are needed. 

Dependent of type of start-up (industry, value proposition, business model etc.), type of activity, (product- or market verification, hardware, software, service etc.) there is a range of different types of funds and funding options available. 

Developing your idea, building a business model and aquiring funds to implement the work is a continous iteration and learning process. This means that you actually will build a serie of business models, one more refined after another. Your development plan will continously be updated and upgraded. 

BUT doing so you will always, at any moment, have sufficient insights, data and knowledge to build an appropriate investor pitch to the preferred investor at a certain stage of your development process. 

In collaboration with your business designer you have to approach the appropriate type of fund and select your investor carefully.