What Companies Want are paying customers

What Women Want is a romantic comedy film about a man who eavesdrops on women’s thoughts.

What companies really want are paying customers – not more funding.
Venture Capitalists should be able to eavesdrop on founder’s thoughts.

Additional funding can come in handy to:
- spend more money on marketing events and efforts
- have more salesmen
Both with the final goal to get paying customers.
Additional funding is not the goal.
Funding is just to speed up the development of the company as it allows for increasing marketing and sales spending.

Customers instead of Venture Capital

Investors, Venture Capitalists and Business Angels mainly think of investing whereas the main problem is getting the customers. Money doesn’t imply a company will get paying customers or increase revenue significantly.

Especially in the business of web services the investment to get a service up and running is fairly low as Randy Komisar of Kleiner Perkins says: Maybe Web start-ups don’t need venture capital. The start-up and operation costs are fairly low compared to the marketing and sales costs.
In the extraordinary case the company has the luck the solution is picked up by bloggers and reviewers, the marketing spending requirement can be very limited too as this will give major exposure money can’t buy.

Conversion from visitors to customers

In most cases the main problem is the marketing for exposing the solution and generating the buzz around the products or services. Letting the potential customers know the solution to their problem is available.
The marketing, social media marketing and SEO should generate traffic to the website, generate interest and stimulate the demand.

The next problem is the conversion from visitors to leads and eventually to customers.
The funnel is a long or slow process that in most cases cannot be speed up.
Marketing and sales need to cooperate to achieve the conversion from lead to customer.
This costs more money or creativity.

Money is a tool – custmers are the real thing

In any industry the paying customers are the real goal.
Getting there can be helped by taking money from investors (at a cost or company control) or as a loan (interest). Money is just a tool.

What does your company need the most ?