Our class was introduced to funding by guest speaker John Dimmer. John Dimmer is an investor, entrepreneur and serves on the board of directors of several companies and a Managing member of FIRS management. John Dimmer attended clover park high school with our instructor Andrew Fry.
John Dimmer got a baseball scholarship at the University of Oregon where he studied accounting. After graduation, he returned to Washington to work for Puget sound bank. After that, he worked a couple of jobs and later started free range media with Andrew Fry in 1994. In 1999 he had a happy exit after selling the company to Luminant Worldwide.
After free range media, he also built up and sold another company. Prior to selling his company, he gave us tips on how to use Accounting principles to our advantage. His company had quite a bit of dept and that scared every buyer but he was able to transfer that dept to the equity and suddenly his company was very attractive to potential buyers. He went into a temporary retirement after selling his company but later got out of retirement to start a Honda dealership in Oregon.
Regarding funding, he was able to give us the different steps to funding your business.
1. Self funding - this comes from the founders savings.
2. Friends and families - the comes from the founders relatives and wealthy uncles.
3. Crowdfunding - Kick starter, indiegogo
4. Anger - this are investors willing to put in thousands of dollars into a business. They usually have networks of them like the Tacoma Angel Networks, Angels Alliance in Seattle etc.
5. First Round - this is the first series of funding the company has to take part in to grow.
6. Capital Round - this is the next round that involves raising capital to start the business.
7. Second Round - this is when the company has already started but needs to expand or just keep running.
8. Mezzanine - this is the pre IPO round.
9. Public Offering - this is when the company files for and IPO and is liquidated.
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