Raising business funds
In order to start a business you are going to have to have money, this is pretty much a given. The challenge is finding the money that you need. There are several different places that you can get funding, the appropriate one will depend in large part on what stage of development your business is in. In the early days you should plan for the fact that most of the money that you will need will have to come from your savings.
When you are starting a business the early funding is largely going to have to come out of your savings. Most of the other sources of funding are not going to be available until you have your company up and running. That means that you are going to have to have some fairly substantial savings to get started. Of course there are variations on this, some businesses can be started with very little initial money and there are others where you may be able to get funding early in the process. But in general you should expect that in the early days the bulk of the funding will come out of your own pocket.
The first place that you are going to want to look for outside funds will be from the government. They have all kinds of programs in place to help small business owners get the money they need. There are some programs that are aimed specifically at minority business owners so these are definitely ones that you will want to look into. The best source of government money is in the form of grants since this doesn't have to be repaid. Far more likely however are loans, many of them at low interest. These are usually easier to qualify for than loans from a bank would be.
Once you have a business that is up and running, or in some cases earlier than that you will probably need to borrow money from a bank to allow your business to grow. There are a lot of factors that the bank looks at when deciding whether to grant a business loan but mostly it comes down to how good of a chance they think your business has of succeeding. This will largely be based on your business plan so make sure that it is well written.
Another option that you have for funding your business is investors. Normally the business needs to be established before they will get involved but again there are exceptions to this. The advantage of investors is that they provide money that doesn't have to be paid back but it will require that you give up part ownership in the business. Investors are similar to banks in what they look for in a business except that they will be more interested in the prospects your business has for growing. Again your business plan will be critical to getting this type of funding.