I went to a fabulous talk the other night at the University of Colorado campus. The session was put on by TechStars, an organization in Boulder that helps startups. Its made of up a bunch of successful entrepreneurs who are now Venture Capitalists and Angel Investors. The topic of the session was "How to Finance Your Startup". There were about 150 people or so there. I was one of maybe 15 females in the audience. I felt pretty proud that I was there.

The panel was made up of 6 investors. Very smart, very successful people. Here are some of the key things I took away from it:

1.First of all, they advise against taking on investors for as long as you can. The more money you take, the more equity you give up in your company. Make sure you are ready to do that. Bootstrap, self-finance, use credits cards, work a day job, whatever...but run as long as you can before borrowing from VC's or Angels.

2.If you are starting a business because you want to work for yourself, the minute you take money from an investor, you are not working for yourself anymore. Really take a look at why you want to start a business.

3.Don't take little bits of money at a time from investors. You give up approx 30%-50% of equity in your company every time you borrow. It sounds like its better to wait as long as possible and then do one big round of funding from an investor.

4. Don't ask yourself "How can I borrow money". Ask yourself "How can I not borrow money".

5. When approaching investors, engage them so they want to spend time with you.

6. Be able to describe what your company does in 10 minutes.

7. Entrepreneurs feel like they have to know everything about their company and how its going to work from the get go. You do not have to have all the answers in that investor meeting. They know that your business plan is going to change and look very different in 6 months.

8. There's no such thing as a bad meeting. Even if you sucked in it and they hate you, you learned something that will better you the next time.

One of the panelist, Greg Held with CTEK, had a great saying. It goes something like this..."if I had bacon, I could make bacon & eggs, if I just had eggs". In other words, you have nothing, but you can envision everything. I hope I didn't botch that up. Gary said it so beautifully.