Trying to get money for your great idea can feel a lot like trying to penetrate the “popular crowd” in high school. The fawning, the preening, the right clothing labels, wittily delivering the just-so-perfect cutting remark at exactly the right time. It’s exhausting. How do you “become cool,” bridge the social/economic gap and actually get inside the inner circle where the money is? Here is shortlist of tips to get the venture capitalist’s attention via Guy Kawasaki:

1. Get an introduction by a partner-level lawyer: He/she should work at a firm that does a lot of VC financing work. Best-case email/voicemail says: “This is the most interesting company I’ve seen in my 20 years of legal work for startups.” VCs dream about calls like this. Side note: this is why you should pay top dollar and use a well-known corporate finance attorney instead of Uncle Joe the quicky divorce lawyer. You’re paying for connections, not just expertise.

2. If you’re in tech, get an introduction by a professor of engineering: Best-case email/voicemail: “This team is the smartest one I’ve seen in 20 years of teaching computer science. Larry and Sergie would have carried their backpacks for them.”

3. Get an introduction by the founder of a company in the VC’s portfolio: Best-case email/voicemail: “My buddies are starting a new company, and I think it’s really worth a look.” It helps if the person making the call is from a successful company in the VC’s portfolio. Tap into your LinkedIn network to find acquaintances in the VC’s portfolio. (Maybe it’s just me, but it bugs me when a connection of a connection of a connection wants me to connect them to someone who will look at a deal. LinkedIn enables you to just make direct contact, and that’s my advice… IF you can show success *see tip No. 4*. If you can’t show success, the connection of a connection of a connection is useless anyway.

4. Show success: If you can’t get any of the above types of introductions, the most compelling email/voicemail you can make is: “My buddy and I have been working in our garage, taking no pay,a nd we built a site that is doubling in traffic every month. Right now, we’re at 250,000 page view a day after 30 days.” With these two sentences you’ve proved to investors that you can make a little bit of money (none) go far, your architecture looks scalable so far, and—most important—the dogs are already eating the food.

5. Make sure your company is in the right space: No matter how you get to the venture capitalist, make sure he/she is the right one for you. After all, there’s no use pitching to someone who can’t help you. If have the cure for cancer, contacting a firm’s enterprise software guru isn’t much help, so do your homework.

6. Send a short email: The ideal length is three or paragraphs, and make sure it covers these points—
a. What the company does
b. What problem you are solving
c. What’s special about your technology/ marketing/ expertise/ connections
d. Who you are

These methods can help you become a part of the moneyed in-crowd with their exclusive entourage… what happens next is up to you.

Everyone knows that business is changing rapidly. Are you ramping up your skills just as quickly? I doubt it. Most CEOs are sucked into working on the tactical aspects of the business. All the big money is in the strategic. Big strategic progress comes from new knowledge, information, and the guts to work on applying it.

In small business, there are two aspects to sharpening the saw: knowledge acquisition and thought process challenge. Big business does a better job at both. Training is a staple in a large corporate environment, but establishing a sounding board, at least, can be a huge improvement in a small company. Without a sounding board, you are a boat without a sail.

How to sharpen your saw?
- Attend seminars and workshops
- Join an industry group
- Benchmark
- Read one business book per month
- Form a board of directors (this board must be paid or this process will fail)
- Join a CEO peer group

Everyone knows you get what you pay for, but few operate that way. More often than not when I’m asked for a marketing strategy / business plan proposal from a new entrepreneur, I can almost hear the loss of breath for a moment once they get to the “fees” area.

Here’s the reason why great people cost money. Great companies know that “the systems run the business, the people run the systems.” Yet, without good systems (i.e. in a startup situation), even better people are required.

You cannot expect superstars to work for below average wages. However, because many CEOs have occasionally gotten a bargin on an excellent employee, they make their pay strategy a “lowest bidder” competition. You simply cannot recruit and retain good people for low-dough. I add the word retain because it costs even more to keep replacing people, retraining for the position, your lost time and energy, etc.

If you do not pay market rate for good people, you will only get the bad ones. If you fill your business up with mediocre performers, good performers will not want to work for you. Winners attract winners. Period.

OR: “Just because you gave me the $$$…”

I had a meeting yesterday with a VERY exciting prospect, Tanya Carpenter, founder of DStat, the first hair product ever created specifically to eliminate static electricity, instantly taming frizzy and flyaway hair. Brilliant!

However, Ms. Carpenter is in the process of forming her advisory board and management team and I’m concerned about what she might feel is an “obligation” to those who have made financial contributions to her dream. Here’s my message to all budding entrepreneurs who have been fortunate enough to convince others to invest money in their vision… so what?!?!

You owe these people NOTHING more than to build a successful company and give them the largest return on their dollars. You don’t owe them management roles, or Board seats, or any “say” whatsoever in your vision. As the founder/entrepreneur, it is your responsibility to guard your vision from outside distractions and alterations at all costs.

I cannot recommend highly enough that you get yourself involved in a CEO-network as quickly as possible. Let me know if I can guide you through this process or at least be a non-biased ear.