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For small businesses and investors, there comes a time where you may require the services of an investor to help get your innovation underway. There can be several reasons for this, such as:

• you need financial assistance to get the product ready to release on the market;
• you need the business skills an investor may bring, to help commercialise your innovation;
• you need the distribution networks and contacts an investor might have, to help get your product into the market more quickly.

Whatever the reason, these people are called investors for a reason – they are going to invest resources with you, be it time, money, skill, and or capitalising on their existing business relationships. For this reason, investors are particular about what they invest in, and generally consider:

• they will eventually like some return;
• they like any risks to be minimised;
• they like flexibility and lots of options for commercialisation.

So what might an investor look at, and what can the average small business or inventor do to make their project more attractive to investors? While each investor varies in relation to their preferences, common bottom line criteria that we see most investors check are:

• they want there to be some IP (Intellectual Property) in place, or at least the option still to remain for pursuing adequate IP protection;
• they want any IP to be in order, and professionally done (and will generally have this reviewed by their own patent attorney);
• they will generally want the option to pursue overseas IP protection, and ideally for the period before committing to this to be as long as possible;
• they will assess how much work might be required to get the innovation ready for market (sometimes the amount of work required can surprise inventors) and this will affect whether they invest, or how much return they will expect;
• they will often perform some market analysis, and financial analysis of expected returns before making a final decision.

Whatever you can do as an inventor, or small business, to satisfy these criteria will often increase your rate of success of finding an investor, as well as the amount of commitment they might make. We realise that it is not always an ideal world, but if it was then what you should do prior to seeking investors includes: