Cannabis Biz Funding for Dummies

Authored By : Jordan Zoot

The first rule we always explain to founders that are seeking to create a venture-funded entity who ask why they need a CPA, we tell them “to prevent you from being killed off by payroll taxes, business permits and a host of other little items before their “next greatest idea” is discovered by the market.

We are talking about straightforward business principles.

Our suggested steps down the path are:

  1. Do your research and use resources which are available for free on the internet [more on this in a bit].
  2. Hire the best attorney and CPA that you can find, vet and afford. We discuss this at length in Difference CPA – Accountant. We add that having both is important for balance, the LAST thing you want is an attorney with OCD and control issues [See Cannabis Biz Tough – Lawyers – CPA’s].
  3. Build it yourselves rather than investing $$$ in someone else’s leftovers

Places to Start

Y Combinator provides seed funding for startups. Seed funding is the earliest stage of venture funding. It pays your expenses while you’re getting started. They are a legend in the venture start-up space, and the resources they offer are staggering. Let’s start with their Resources page. The first items we find there are:

Do Things That Don’t Scale. –Startups take off because the founders make them take off.

Startup Playbook. – Startup advice from many YC partners distilled into one document.

How to Start a Startup.– Build something users love and spend less than you make.

YC Essentials– What we at YC consider the most critical, most transformative advice for startups.

There’s enough reading and information there to keep the founders of a startup busy for at least a month.

Which should get founders that are willing to work hard, read and then put their thoughts together and discuss with the CPA and attorney issues that should be brought in at the start of the process.

The result should be the genesis of a focused team that can get a startup business well down the path to pitching investors which ideas and a deck of their creation.

We guarantee it will beat the piss out of the templated business plans that are sold to start-ups by the “Merchants of Slime”.

 

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