A serial entrepreneur friend who's looking for funding on his 5th startup right now: """You pretty much have to have a working product, thrilled customers and a revenue stream right now for VC's to look at you."""
Getting funding has gotten pretty tough here in the Valley. I can only imagine that the funding scene is going to be a lot worse in New York.
Huh? If you have a product that works, is growing, and revenue coming in, you don't need a VC, you need a normal business loan from a bank. If you actually have money coming in and a business plan that's demonstrably working, but just need money to expand (that's the word regular businesses use to mean "scale"), then you need to 1. get an accountant to write it up in the correct manner and 2. make an appointment with the business section of a good bank.
You still might have trouble with that right now, it's really not a good time for any kind of loans, and you can forget these multi-million dollar speculative paydays with little obligation or timeline, but if you have a proper business then you have proper business options and hopefully don't have to sell your businesses' soul to get the cash you need to grow.
Wow, incredible words of wisdom. I am myself at a startup (http://racy.com) and we had a little funding, but are bootstrapping and trying to make sales to cover our costs. We are only 1 year through and are very very close to breaking even.
Getting funding has gotten pretty tough here in the Valley. I can only imagine that the funding scene is going to be a lot worse in New York.