During the last quarter of 09′ there was a ton of buzz around Jason’s Jihad…  Basically Jason, founder of Mahalo.com, is waging full on war against on Keiretsu Forum and other pay-to-play angel groups. Not sure what I’m referring to? Check out Jason Calacanis’ blog to get caught up.

Although some of his points are valid, and many are simply misunderstood or misconstrued, I say let’s focus on moving in the right direction. Instead of writing yet another commentary blog on how horrible these angel groups are, I’m here to provide a alternative solution. The goal is to educate entrepreneurs on how to raise capital and to setup support mechanisms to empower them to raise capital without paying these pay-to-play fees.

Frank Peters posted a great article supporting some sort of fees as a “bozo filter” to help weed out some of the entrepreneurs. It’s very difficult filtering through 100 applications a month, and although many have tried automating this process, you simply can’t take out the human element.

At the end of the day you must take control of your destiny. The greatest successes I’ve seen are from the entrepreneurs who focused on going after their customer first, not investors. Too many entrepreneurs put funding in front of their business. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard “I need $1 million to get this idea off the ground.” The companies that are raising money are the ones that have proven their business model and simply need capital to scale. That said, go out there, network, take the money if it comes, but focus on making deals happen.
Here are a few organizations that will really boost your chances of funding, and help with everything from raising capital to local resources. SCVN (SCVN.org), TCVN (TCVN.org), and FundingPost’s local events coming up March 9th and 11th in OC and LA (Fundingpost.com).

If you take the proper approach to funding you’ll have better chances of raising capital attending these venture capital events than pitching directly to investors groups.

For these and many more local networking events, check out our calendar at: http://www.sproutstart.com/events.php