Raising Money is Like Kissing Frogs

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Even in this market, there are new companies getting funded, but the process of raising money can seem at first to be quite unpleasant. You have to kiss a lot of frogs before you find your prince--and you will sometimes despair at the companies that you see getting funded while you're still in the hunt. Over the course of my career, I have seen hundreds of entrepreneurs that are on the money trail. Many business plans that I thought were marginal wound up raising huge amounts of money. I have also seen great plans that never got off the ground for lack of funding.

In most cases, success at raising money had to do more with persistence than it did with any other quality. The entrepreneur that would simply not give up always got funded in the end. He or she would often modify a plan, and the ultimate business may have been very different from the original concept--but, nevertheless, they got the money and they got their start.

Even though raising money is like kissing frogs, it's not all bad. Like that search for your true love, the prep work can actually be rather enjoyable. Venture capitalists and angel investors can provide an entrepreneur with a great deal of insight and experience. Look at the process of pitching investors as an education and, even if a group doesn't invest try, to learn something valuable from each of them.

Veteran entrepreneur Nolan Bushnell is the founder Atari, Chuck E. Cheese, Etak, ByVideo, Axlon, and uWink. Among his accomplishments, Bushnell invented Pong, hired Steve Jobs, and developed a series of robots. He lives in California. @NolanBushnell