IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/h/spr/sprchp/978-981-95-5597-0_4.html

Discerning Your Business Goals

In: Startup Fundraising Decoded

Author

Listed:
  • Timothy Hor

    (RMIT University, School of Management)

  • Dimo Dimov

    (University of Bath, School of Management)

  • Georges Romme

    (Eindhoven University of Technology, Industrial Engineering & Innovation Sciences)

  • James Skinner

    (University of Newcastle Australia, Newcastle Business School)

Abstract

This chapter guides entrepreneurs through defining their business goals as the foundation for fundraising strategy. It introduces six startup types (small business, lifestyle, social, exit-focused, scalable, and corporate venture), each with distinct funding approaches ranging from bootstrapping to venture capital. The chapter emphasizes that founders must first identify their startup type, then articulate specific business goals with measurable milestones, understand equity funding trade-offs, calculate precise capital needs based on those milestones rather than industry norms, and ensure alignment among all stakeholders before pursuing external investment. This strategic clarity—documented in the RaiiSE Capital Raising Canvas—ensures that fundraising decisions reinforce rather than conflict with the founder’s authentic vision, whether that’s building a steady local business, pursuing hypergrowth and market dominance, creating social impact, or positioning for acquisition. The chapter stresses that not all startups need venture capital, encouraging founders to evaluate alternatives like grants, partnerships, or revenue acceleration that may better preserve ownership while achieving their goals.

Suggested Citation

  • Timothy Hor & Dimo Dimov & Georges Romme & James Skinner, 2026. "Discerning Your Business Goals," Springer Books, in: Startup Fundraising Decoded, chapter 0, pages 91-146, Springer.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:sprchp:978-981-95-5597-0_4
    DOI: 10.1007/978-981-95-5597-0_4
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a
    for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:sprchp:978-981-95-5597-0_4. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.