Where Can You Find Capital to Grow your Idea?

 Financing your idea (startup)

Most of us if not all of us have dreams, aspirations, things we would love to accomplish in life if given a chance or if the opportunity ever presented itself. Some of us have attempted and failed hence given up, some of us are still attempting and hanging in there while others have not yet gotten the courage and right support to try at all.

A Brush with Money Lenders and and a ‘Friend’

In 2009, I was hood winked by someone I thought was genuine into co-owning a struggling business with him. I got the impression the business just needed an extra charismatic leader to lure great deals and scale existing operations. I even went as far as standing in as surety for a loan the business took which meant I attached all my personal assets at that time.

Talking to Startups who were pitching for funding during the Innovator’s Night Event at the Innovation Village Kampala

I was new to borrowing from money lenders and in my head I thought, “this is a small loan, we can always pay”, it so we moved on tussling it out to see the business succeeds. All I remember was I always got in the deals and left them with him to complete payments and servicing clients since he was the technical one but strangely we never seemed to get past clients making actual payments.

Fast forward, months after, I get a call from the money lenders to pay the loan or they use legal means on me. I was surprised about them calling me. I turns out, we had forfeited paying about 8 months or more. What I later learned about money lenders was they cannot sell or liquidate something until the aggregated interest is above the market valuation of the collateral.  So they also went quiet, in my head I thought they had sold the assets and moved on meanwhile they were counting down the days.

“The number one reason we can hardly find finance to run & grow our businesses is we have burnt out all our options” @JonathanKayemba

I later had to pay them some extra monies to settle all this outside legal means. My friend was nowhere to be seen, I had discovered through some clients that possibly he was doing these deals behind my back. In the middle of all this, something struck me; how well did I know this guy before?? To my surprise he was a casual friend to my cousins, we had never really spoken till when he approached me.

 What were my Lessons?

1. Before considering doing business or going into any type of venture, we must always ask ourselves this one question; “how well do I know this person or these people”?
2. People that con us have done their homework on us; they know all our vulnerable spots and use that to exploit us. When we are focused on something urgent (pressing) it’s very easy to be distracted from what is happening around us e.g. if we are chasing money, someone who comes along with a similar mind (intention), we just go along with. 
3. When we borrow money, rarely is paying back a focus when we are taking the money. Our focus is getting the loan and sorting out our financial pressure(s). We only remember to pay if the person we borrowed from calls us and that’s when we panic, come up with stories. This is something I decided to kick out of my life in 2016. They are three categories of people that borrow money: