This site uses cookies to improve your experience. To help us insure we adhere to various privacy regulations, please select your country/region of residence. If you do not select a country, we will assume you are from the United States. Select your Cookie Settings or view our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.
Cookie Settings
Cookies and similar technologies are used on this website for proper function of the website, for tracking performance analytics and for marketing purposes. We and some of our third-party providers may use cookie data for various purposes. Please review the cookie settings below and choose your preference.
Used for the proper function of the website
Used for monitoring website traffic and interactions
Cookie Settings
Cookies and similar technologies are used on this website for proper function of the website, for tracking performance analytics and for marketing purposes. We and some of our third-party providers may use cookie data for various purposes. Please review the cookie settings below and choose your preference.
Strictly Necessary: Used for the proper function of the website
Performance/Analytics: Used for monitoring website traffic and interactions
I’ve heard a lot of people question whether there is too much money in venturecapital chasing too few great deals. Others believe that new business models are emerging that could replace venturecapital all together. We’re in a new tech bubble!” some have pronounced.
This is part of my blog series “ Pitching a VC.&#. I’ve sat through a lot of VC pitches and having been CEO of an enterprise software firm for many years I’ve also sat through many customer meetings with sales teams. The following are some tips for the debate style VC meeting. Tips in a debate led VC Meeting.
As a VC and former entrepreneur let me offer you some advice. Remember that the goal of an email to a VC or an introduction from a trusted mutual connection is simply to get you the meeting. Remember that the goal of an email to a VC or an introduction from a trusted mutual connection is simply to get you the meeting.
Steve Blank , January 25, 2010 10 Tips for Adding Game Mechanics to a Non-Gaming Service - ReadWriteStart , September 21, 2010 Startups & VCs: Learn How to Design, Market, & Eat Your Own. - First Principles.
Handling PR with VCs. This is part of my series on How to Raise VC but could equally be filed under Startup Advice more generally. Just notice how many VCemails you get after your TechCrunch article or after you were on stage at TC50. In your VC pitch your PR page should take no longer than 30 seconds – Wait.
But in my experience as an entrepreneur and now spending my time amongst investors I can generalize that almost all VC investments in early stage technology & Internet investments come down to just four key factors. This post was prompted by an email exchange I had with a young entrepreneur. And VC’s are tough customers.
Most board members don’t have the intention of checking email, reading the news or sending a quick text message but just like most smokers don’t want to pull out a cigarette?—?the It’s super distracting when your executives are typing away at email while the rest of the board is meant to be engaged in a discussion.
The first was to do a 5 minute “ignite&# presentation – 5 minutes, 15 slides. I did the outline of the 15 slides on the flight over (after a few beers). I tried to visualize how I was going to hit such a precise presentation where you get 20 seconds per slide and then they get auto forwarded.
Don’t: tell us, “and now I enter my name, and then I put in my email address, and then I can pull in my social graph through Facebook Connect, and then then I can select the button here to Tweet out my actions on Twitter.&# Zzzzzzzzz. They had slides with moving images and music. But make them sparse and make the B-I-G!
Here’s Why You Should Just Send the Deck I know you have your document sending tool to send your fund-raising deck to VCs and track who read your deck, which pages they read and how much time they spend on each page. Your deck should be so good that a VC asks you for permission to show it to his or her portfolio companies.
10 Ways To Be Your Own Boss - A VC : VentureCapital and Technology , June 18, 2010 The folks at Behance and Cool Hunting asked me to talk at their 99% Conference a couple months ago. Personally, I don't like weighty board packs and I do not wish to inflict slide preparation upon anyone. Yes, even bootstrappers.
“Yes&# was given to me by one of my favorite angel investor / seed VC’s to work with – John Greathouse of Rincon Venture Partners and author of the blog InfoChachkie that you should check out because it is filled with great info from a guy who has been a very successful operator. So what are you waiting for?
And having frameworks is a useful way to standardize your customer studies so that highly intelligent, inexperienced young people can crank out PowerPoint slides with such authority and beautiful consistency. I get emails like the one above all the time. I found that most VC’s never gave me any feedback when I was pitching.
They don’t handle Twitter feedback, emails or IM. Pitching a VC – As I said in a previous post – the best VC meetings are discussions and not sales pitches. VC’s have a crocodile aversion as much as the next guy. So you’ve identified a problem. We found some success when we tried D, E, F.
You put some update slides on things like key hires or biz dev deals being negotiated and you didn’t plan to talk about them. But they were in a slide and people asked you questions so it ended up chewing up 30 minutes. If a VC is on 7 boards it becomes impossible to always have board dinners.
When I give a keynote address, I often start by asking my audience, by raise of hands, to tell me how many of them are angel or VC investors, how many are entrepreneurs, and how many are service providers such as attorneys. Immediately, I can tell how to orient the explanations behind my pre-cast slides, based upon the response.
Now I’m a VC. My first series was the slides that go into a PowerPoint presentation. Since there are 10-12 slides this gave me my first few weeks. The obvious starting point is to email a few friends and let them know you have a new blog. That way people who want to get your blog by RSS and/or email can do so.
It’s encouraging to know that there are still great VC firms like KV that are looking to make these short of big bets on shaping the future. One of the biggest mistakes I see at board meetings is what I call the “filibuster board” in which the executive team spends 2 hours going through 100 slides and runs out the clock with no discussion.
Management teams whisk through slides trying to get through a presentation to share how great things are going and they are eager to get through the meeting so they can get back to their real jobs. Once you prepare the deck each department that contributed slides feels compelled to get it’s half hour of time presenting their progress.
When I need to give a speech and I’m writing a slide for my deck, I think up the story in my mind that I’m going to tell for this slide. As a VC it’s how I think through which markets will be attractive in the future, which ones I want to be in now and how the technology & business world will likely evolve.
You can slide it onto the corner of your iPhone, or you can flip it over, and it you get a wide angle lens. I never had any experience with venturecapital and all of that, and never would have known what to do. First of all, tell us about what olloclip's products are? Unscrew that, and you get a macro lens.
If you provide these slides in advance you give board members a chance to reflect and come prepared for a real discussion. Sometimes it’s because the VC brings associates to the meeting. Literally stop the meeting, let everybody do their quick emails and then restart with no devices. Here’s the reality.
Do your homework on opportunity, competitors, financial projections, funding required, and hook investors the first time you can with an executive summary and ten-slide pitch. The old cold call or broadcast email to anyone who has “investor” in their bio just doesn’t work. Request warm investor meetings from peers and advisors.
THIRD TIME’S A CHARM: On Sunday we presented to a panel of judges consisting of entrepreneurs and a VC investor. When I was creating the slide to introduce the team, he asked to be listed as an iOS developer instead of a designer as he was registered. We received great feedback and was unanimously voted the 1st Place Winner.
After all, most people are good for a few introductory emails. But I would argue that you can develop relationships with many advisers, mentors and VCs that will help with introductions for no equity. You can go as high as 1% because they’re going to get diluted when you bring in VC. People like to help. Have 8 of them!
Equity-Only CTO and Equity-Only Developers - SoCal CTO , November 1, 2010 I had a recent email dialog with the founder of a company looking for a CTO for their startup. We had several emails back and forth where he provided basic details on the concept. think his slides are great (and by far much easier on the eye then mine.).
Email readers, continue here… ] The Angel Capital Association (ACA) lists over four hundred member groups, located throughout the USA. You will have to hone your story well, down to fifteen minutes and perhaps fifteen slides in your presentation. Then there is venturecapital.
VC Pitch Decks. My recommendation is to have an 8-12 slide decks with only the most critical factors of your business. The great thing about the VC pitch deck is that you can have 30 slides. Each slide should be minimalist, more graphics and less text. Too many people have 15-20 slides. Presentations.
The steady drip of hacked Hillary Clinton-related emails showed her campaign team questioning then-candidate FDA commissioner Robert Califf’s ties to the pharma industry. His slides are here. THE REGULATORS’ THUMBS GO UP AND DOWN.
We did what many VC funds did – we presented our annual results, we stood up and talked about our portfolio companies, we invited a few to also present and then we had dinner & drinks at some posh restaurant. So of course it was natural that we would invite other VC firms. So I decided to change up our format a bit.
We organize all of the trending information in your field so you don't have to. Join 5,000+ users and stay up to date on the latest articles your peers are reading.
You know about us, now we want to get to know you!
Let's personalize your content
Let's get even more personalized
We recognize your account from another site in our network, please click 'Send Email' below to continue with verifying your account and setting a password.
Let's personalize your content