I've been traveling lately -- including London and New York over these last weeks. I have been meeting with private equity groups, major corporations, venture funds, individual investors, and investment bankers. My goal: Building The Trendlines Group's network around the world for our portfolio companies and our clients.  As it happens in the course of such meetings, conversation turns to challenges -- especially challenges for early-stage companies.

I've had a chance to think about the challenges and can characterize them as follows:

• Navigating through a "difficult" environment and season. The current environment for raising money is often characterized as "difficult," and this difficulty is exacerbated by the time of year -- it's August (vacation season) and the Jewish holidays loom -- this year in October -- only some six weeks away.
  
  
• Dealing with the market uncertainties. One friend refers to the public capital markets as "sloppy," and no one truly knows what the near term holds for the world's stock exchanges. The IPO market is generally considered to be "closed." 
  
  
• Allocating the right amount of time. Raising money is hard work.  Lots of meetings. Lots of miles. Lots of time. It turns out that the truth about raising money is true:  Raising money is a full-time job. 
   
  For early-stage companies, we have an additional challenge:  a "funding gap" -- raises in the low millions often require more effort than larger raises.
   
  
• Accepting responsibility. Raises are the responsibility of CEOs and their boards. CEOs must know that raising money is "job 1." Boards must provide leadership and support. Every company that succeeds raises money numerous times; learning how to do this well is critical for CEOs. Money can be found for most businesses most of the time. It takes intensive efforts from CEOs and their boards.
  
  
• Networking and telling the right stories to the right people. Know this: Like us, money needs to "work"; money that is not "at work" cannot grow. Investors continue to look for the right opportunities; sophisticated investors allocate assets for speculative and foreign investment.

It's certainly not an easy environment for raising money; add having patience to the list of characteristics and tasks necessary for success.

MarketReach America, which we produce with the Maryland/Israel Development Center, is a great example of a program that creates relationships and helps companies raise money. My congratulations to the companies selected to participate in next month's program in Baltimore.