About Funding Note

Our story

I always intrigued by the story of unicorns – not those from the children’s books or sci-fi movies, but those in the business world: Companies that are valued at least a billion of dollar.

Those unicorns are simply phenomenal: Uber, Snapchat, SpaceX, and some others. But just anything else in life, there are unicorns that simply don’t live up to investors and the general public’s expectations – namely, fallen unicorns. Theranos is one of the examples of the fallen ones.

Now let’s take a step back – let’s focus on million-dollar startups. Just like the unicorns, there are much success, as well as failures in this group of companies. They are mostly influenced by today’s startup culture.

The startup culture

Looking at the startup trends these days, here’s what bothering me. You see, many startups receive multi-million-dollar funding from VCs and/or angels, but not many are actually on the black from their operations. But what are their plans?

One of the most popular startup’s exit strategy is getting acquired by another company.  That’s the reason why many startups aim to maximize value to make it attractive to buyers, often sacrificing profits for the sake of growth – and valuation – in the process.

Unfortunately, that doesn’t always the case; most likely, the startups will burn the investors’ money and eventually die because they run out of fuel – before got acquired by other companies, as planned.

Celebrating funding – insanity?

Gary Vaynerchuk, a prolific entrepreneur, investor and social media guru, says, “The current misjudgment in the business ecosystem – that raising money means you have achieve something or is something to celebrate – is insanity to me.”

I agree with Gary. I don’t know how about you, but I view “success” as the ability of companies – startups or established ones – to generate profits out of the invested money, not raising multi-million-dollar in capital. Call me old-school, but I genuinely think that a business should make profits. Otherwise, it’s a failure.

Considering those factors, I decide to build a resource site that is hoped to help budding entrepreneurs – not only focusing on business valuation, but also on profitability. That’s the underlying principle of Funding Note.

What is Funding Note?

Funding Note is an online publication that offers small businesses and startups tips, information, and resources on business funding and financing.

Here’s a list of content that you can receive from us:

• Our personal view on news, blogs and other content related to startup, as well as business funding and financing from the web;
• Resources that matter to your startup’s growth – startup tips, funding opportunities, events, and so on.
• Interviews and Q&As with startup founders, business owners/operators, and funding experts.
• Reviews on everything related to startup funding – business incubators/accelerators, funding platforms, VCs, lending firms, and so on.

Our recent posts

Who is the Owner?

My name is Ivan Widjaya. I’m the owner of the award-winning entrepreneurship blog Noobpreneur, as well as several other blogs, mostly related to business.  I’m a business blogger, web publisher and content marketer for SMEs.  I’m also a published author on Small Biz Trends, LinkedIn Pulse, and some other online publications.

I’m always interested in startups and entrepreneurship, and best considered as an enthusiast and practitioner, rather than an expert or pundit. I’m independent, and so is Funding Note. We’re not affiliated with any businesses or brands.

You can find me on LinkedIn, Facebook or Quora (yes, you can ask me about anything.)

Note: Views on Funding Note are my own, and those shouldn’t necessarily be considered as professional advice.