Generally
Preparing for Start-up and Smaller-business Capital Raising - A comprehensive article by Practical Law Company about raising capital for start-ups. It has been updated to reflect information about the 2012 JOBS Act and features links to definitions and other how-to articles. This article is available for free for law students and as part of the Practical Law Company subscription.
How to Fund a Startup - An article written by Paul Graham, a founder at start-up incubator Y Combinator, about funding start-ups. This article is available for free through the hyperlink. This articles give an entirely pro-founder prospective on starting a company.
Stanford University offers a free step-by-step video guide to learning about start-up issues in their Entrepreneurship Corner. Among the plethora of videos broken down by topics and tags, there is also a video series which guides users through how to finance a new venture, raise venture capital, find investors, selecting investors, negotiating with venture capital firms, and managing the subsequent venture capital money.
Visit the Shared Secondary Sources page for blogs that discuss financing issues, like Startup Company Lawyer's article explaining the difference between convertible bridge financing and a Series A round.
JOBS Act
LexisNexis's Emerging Issues series explains how the JOBS Act affects start-up financing. "JOBS Act Heralds New Era for Startup and Emerging Growth Company Financing" 2012 Emerging Issues 6529.
Angel Investing
Angel Capital Association is a trade association with a helpful website. It offers news, resources to find angels, and PDFs explaining what angel investors are. This research guide links to the FAQ page which appropriately starts off with "what is an angel investor." Further, the Wisconsin Angel Network is a website compiling deal templates, articles, checklists, and more from across the Internet.
California Transaction Forms: Business Entities - - Chapter 11, Section 130.10 of this California source explains bridge loans in conjunction with venture capital financing and in relation to California financing laws. This article is valuable for new attorneys who need to figure out exactly what the California definition of venture capital and bridge financing is. The price of the entire treatise is $1,172.00.
Venture capital and angels are not the only way to finance a small business.
Incubators
Incubators may invest no, or only a small amount of, capital. However, by offering speakers, intense feedback, and legal and accounting experts incubators make sure that start-ups have the best foundations possible and start-ups coming out of incubators typically have greater chances of funding then other start-ups. YCombinator is a well-known Silicon Valley incubator. The National Business Inncubator Association (NBIA.org) also offers a tool for finding incubators in a certain state. However, the NBIA is not a complete listing and should only be a starting place.
Crowdfunding
Crowdfunding involves getting small amounts of money from many investors. It may work best for hardware (i.e. like the Pebble watch, a crowdfunding success which was funded on kickstarter.com), but can be used for many ideas. For any company considering crowdfunding, Crowdsourcing.org may give ideas on where to start.
Loans
Small business loans are typically not used for high-growth start-ups, but are an option to consider. The link directs to the federal government's Small Business Association website.