ReadWriteWeb

When the going gets tough, the tough get going. Times are now tougher. Which makes most people head home. The half-hearted entrepreneurs, the wannabes who thought it was going to be easy, the folks with connections to VCs who could get a $5m Series A for a copycat app. Who will be left? The gritty entrepreneur of the old school who knows that it is really, really tough to build a great company. At ReadWriteWeb we celebrate these gritty entrepreneurs and in a series kicking off today we will be writing about them - and for them.

Often people start a company without any clear idea of what a company is. Entrepreneurs closet themselves in the garage and start writing code. While the modern tech world could not exist without obsession, artistic inspiration and crazy engineers, there's more to a startup than passion.

In this post, we explore the basics behind corporate entities, stock, financing, and the key non-technical infrastructure every company should have.

I'm a big fan of Japanese writer Haruki Murakami. The genius of Murakami is in his discipline, focus and determination. I see him as a virtual Zen master - an embodiment of wisdom, passion, skills and exceptional will. The elements of his work and life story are inspirational and (here's where ReadWriteWeb comes in) particularly applicable when you're running a startup. Therefore in this post, we take a look at what modern technology startups can learn from this Japanese literary master.

One of the most difficult parts of starting a startup for any entrepreneur is finding that small bit of seed capital to get things going. As evidenced by small seed funds like Y Combinator, a little can go a long way for startup entrepreneurs, but raising that chunk of change to get started can be tricky. Luckily, there are a number of different roads you can take to get from concept to Series A. Below is a list of 13 seed funding options for startup entrepreneurs.