What funding options are available to small businesses?

In general, there are probably two major options. The first involves the borrowing of money of which there are a significant number of different ways to do this and the second is the sale of a portion of your company otherwise known as equity. If your long-term goal is to retain 100% of your company and not have to answer to any other shareholder, then borrowing is the direction you should explore. Traditional borrowijng involves going to a bank or other lending institution or family and will make a big difference whether the business is established and has a history of earnings or whether it s a start-up.  In the alternative, you might offer to sell 10% or 20% of your company in exchange for cash that never has to be paid back. Again there are a significant number of opportunities in selling equity and probably one of the most important things is to include a way to buy the stock back at some future point in time.  In offering a return to an investor, take into consideration the amount of risk they took at the very beginning. This is pretty basic but I hope it helps a bit. Good luck