Having spent the best part of 2 years hunting down finance for a start-up tech company, I can safely say that I’ve “kissed a hundred frogs” and explored just about every avenue there is!

Debt finance is an instrument suited to companies with lots of cash and an easy way to pay back any loans they may take out. They are – possibly – available to those companies with an existing growth trend (On the Up!).

Equity Investment is the route that most start-up small companies take these days, but even that is fraught with barriers, changing goalposts and so many differing views from potential investors that it too is often baffling.

Debt finance instruments are not generally available for the majority of companies who sometimes have unbelievable untapped opportunities, but limited or no revenue -unless they offer a Personal Guarantee.

This requirement, of course, is to mitigate the risk to the lender.

I understand risk; I’ve worked with risk specifically in business for almost 30 years. I’ve created top level risk matrices and registers for £multi-million government programmes and ok large and small businesses alike.

The same approach seems to apply to a lot of early-stage equity investors in the UK. I understand that they need to mitigate the risk where they can. However, like in other parts of the EU and Europe, surely the risk could be shared a little? Maybe the idea warrants a further look? Maybe the ROI is potentially such that it’s worth lending anyway?

The equity investment market seems to start with a “Friends and Family” Round. I suspect that a very small section of the entrepreneurs in society have friends and family with £250k or more in their back pockets, but the majority do not. They also often do not have the necessary links, relationships nor the wherewithal to find such people, across the myriad levels of investor out there.

These include High Net Worth Individuals, Angels (Non-professional and Professional), Private Equity Houses, Venture Capitalists and more.

But there are still challenges if you should get past some of these barriers.

Do you need Pre-seed monies? It suggests pre-revenue doesn’t it? Unfortunately not, except on rare occasions.

Do you need Seed monies, or Series A, B, C, D?

And the definitions and boundaries for these various levels of investment can change with providers.

What is quite shocking though is that recent figures were released by various bodies stating that some early stage equity is being invested at the rate of 1 in 1000 opportunities.

That means that if every one of the 5.5m micro and small businesses even considered asking for early investment for an idea, the total number that could even remotely be successful is 5,500 companies – in the whole of the UK.

So how do you navigate this complex, often weird and challenging environment, if you do want investment from someone on the UK?

My advice if you have a senior enough network of professionals is to use them to get to their networks and beyond, to attract good, solid people with some cash and great expertise.

Secondly, if you do not have such a network, is pay to be a part of a good Angel Network or two. County and Regional boundaries do exist, but not so much when you have a great idea that is recognised as having a potentially great ROI.

Lastly, if you can’t pay for this at the moment, then join free groups of like-minded individuals and founders and start to network that way.

I have found investors in such places, more than once, especially in the early days!