Tern : How to attract investment for your IoT company

The IoT is, as we know, one of the most dynamic, diverse and potential-filled sectors of the technology industry right now. Little wonder that many investment firms and venture capitalists are key to make inroads into the sector.

However, with so many start-ups and entrepreneurs battling for space, making your own IoT company stand out and attract serious investment can be tricky. How can you position your business as attractively as possible for investment, and ensure that it is noticed by the right people at the right time?

Here are three things you need to get exactly right:

Clear value

For any organisation seeking investment, the core goal is always to demonstrate growth potential. After all, growth is what will ultimately deliver return on investment. And this, in turn, means demonstrating the feature or feature which make your business stand out in the crowded IoT marketplace - the features which deliver value to yourcustomers. What makes you special? Why will your customers choose you over your competitors - and why will they continue to do so over the months and years ahead?

One way of approaching this is to remember that the IoT, ultimately, is all about data. It involves collecting information from throughout an environment and transforming that data into tangible insights - insights which ultimately drive action. It is those actions which deliver value for the consumers or businesses deploying your product or services. As such, demonstrating value to potential investors is all about communicating clearly the value that your customers can leverage from you. Are you helping consumers to reduce their household bills, improve their security, get healthier or fitter? Are you helping businesses to manage their equipment more proactively, to reduce their carbon footprint, to lower their maintenance costs? Whatever the ultimately value your business is delivering, this needs to be upfront, clear and impactful to investors - because that value is what will ultimately deliver value for them.

Clear plan

Any decent investor is going to want to see a clear and well thought-through business plan. It needs to cover not just your growth potential over the coming months and years, but also the strategies you are going to deploy to get there.

Distribution and marketing are two particularly important areas to consider, and ones which are often neglected in business plans. If your business is producing IoT hardware - the devices or sensors ultimately deployed within an IoT environment - then you need to consider how you are going to get them to your customers. No matter whether you are producing hardware or software, or wider consultancy services, in the fast-moving IoT landscape it is important to consider your positioning and branding and plan accordingly.

Clear collaboration

The IoT is fundamentally an ecosystem. That is, it relies on different organisations working together and ensuring that their technologies integrate smoothly with each other. Perhaps your company is developing connected sensors for deploying throughout a smart factory. Perhaps you are in the business of IoT analytics, developing an engine which analyses data collected throughout an IoT deployment, and turns it into actionable insights. Perhaps you are an IoT security specialist, finding ways of ensuring that the connected devices throughout an IoT deployment are protected from malicious actors and cybercriminals.

Regardless of your particular area, your product is going to need to integrate smoothly and share information with products from other organisations. And so demonstrating this interoperability and collaboration as clearly as possible is crucial for reassuring investors that your business has a profitable future.

For more advice on how to attract investment for your IoT company, get in touch with Tern today.