We are seeing an exponential growth in number of participants. About 40 participants took part and 280 tweets were posted. The topic was on fund raising and angel Kris Nair and startup mentor Subba Iyer answered a lot of questions from the participants.

Subba Iyer suggested that the best time to look for funding is when you don’t need them. Networking is a must and should be started as early as possible using referrals to reach the VCs. He also added that as far as possible entrepreneurs should look to bootstrap and use funding only for scaling.

Kris Nair and others put forth their 3 rules for startups:

#1 Never start broke.

#2 Always look for funding

#3 Keep hiring top talent

Kris Nair stressed on the point that startups should focus on getting the initial customers and the first $100K in revenues before looking for external funding. Another gem from Kris:

we’s so many ‘good’ angels in this country, If you are not finding one, you are lazy and not looking enough #sbuzz

8 major sources of startup funding:

1. Own money
2. Friends
3. Family
4. Ex-boss, associates
5. Government grants
6. Angels
7. VCs
8. Customer/partner in B2B companies

Chat transcript