Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 19, 2010

I’m writing this post as part of my series with Advice on Raising Venture Capital but will file it under Sales Tips as well since it applies equally to both scenarios. You’ve found a VC partner or principal who has invited you to the Monday partners’ meeting. tip: write it down when asked / parked).

Venture Capital 318

Venture Capital Startup Sales Writing 318

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 31, 2010

So I thought I’d write a piece on how to not suck when you give a presentation. I spotted my fellow VC Leo Spiegel (from Mission Ventures) who had spoken previously to the same group and asked about his experiences. They had slides with moving images and music. I spoke about this yesterday on Fox Business News.

Startup 362

Startup Twiistup Slides Screening 362

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 25, 2010

“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.

Guide 293

Guide Funding Venture Capital Technical Review 293

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 17, 2011

So I thought I’d write a post about how I drive my personal creativity. (A The key is channeling what you learn when you drive onto paper for retention purposes so you have to write it down soon afterward. When I write a blog post I often see the words before I write them. These are all creative processes.

Writing 356

Writing Startup Ideas Summary 356

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 8, 2010

Now I’m a VC. Don’t just write a carbon copy of what somebody else is doing. OK, well, actually the first thing I did is come up with a list of 50 posts that I wanted to write. I didn’t want to run out of things to write about in the first 6 months. Every time I write a post I send it out on Twitter.

Blogging 286

Blogging Startup Writing Summary 286

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 14, 2018

I know all of this because every VC knows this because we’ve all either funded companies that have marketing technology or we’ve seen a pitch with a company that does this. If you haven’t read the other VC fund-raising posts I’ve done as part of this series you can find the whole outline and this first in the series here.]

Funding 239

Funding Venture Capital IP Email 239

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 10, 2014

One of the interesting things about being a VC is that you often see companies in transition. If you’re an early investor like I am that often means writing the first $2-3 million check into a business that previously had either survived on fumes or on a $500,000 angel round. Act your stage.

Startup 381

Startup Resource Venture Capital Activity 381

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 23, 2013

This started as a post in which I was going to write out tips to personal branding and became in stead an essay of my own branding journey. Send me in a corner to work on slides, graphs, spreadsheets and charts. I talked with a few VCs and batted around the idea of becoming a VC. ” And the next day I was an evil VC.

Technical Advisors 385

Technical Advisors Marketing Startup Venture Capital 385

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 18, 2010

I’m a pretty natural public speaker so I can write my presentation the day before and do just fine. 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). Internally I was a wreck. I hear it all the time.

Slides 374

Slides Email Entrepreneur Startup 374

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 12, 2010

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. I appreciate your input.&#

Startup 331

Startup Slides Guide Writing 331

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 30, 2010

My original thinking from Oct ’09 was, while I didn’t (and still don’t) have a crystal ball I worried that: consumers were over-stretched with debt (and make up 77% of the economy), unemployment would continue to rise, which in turn would drive the stock market south and cut the rate of M&A activity and VC investment even further.

Entrepreneur 298

Entrepreneur Venture Capital Technical Review Startup 298

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 3, 2010

You should be actively listening the whole time (actively listening as in listening, writing important things down and asking relevant questions as they talk about their problems). Pitching a VC – As I said in a previous post – the best VC meetings are discussions and not sales pitches.

Sales 314

Sales Startup Venture Capital Customer 314

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 22, 2019

Upfront immediately wrote a check to back this vision and we later teamed up with their former colleague from Twitter turned VC, Rishi Garg of Mayfield and we’ve stayed quiet on what we were up to. Just as we use Google Docs for writing or AirTable for spreadsheets, the world finally has an amazing in-browser tool for visual presentations.

Startup 191

Startup Social Media Slides Design 191

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 8, 2014

If you want the full SlideShare deck with many slides not in either post it’s in this link –> The LA Tech Market. ” I hear it when I visit LPs (the people who invest in VCs) all across the country, “Yeah, I haven’t been out there for a few years but I keep hearing that something is going on there.”

Entrepreneur 376

Entrepreneur Snapchat Startup Google 376

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 16, 2009

Because they’re street smart, most great entrepreneurs tend to prefer getting out and talking with real customers rather than sitting in a cubicle all day doing beautiful PowerPoint slides. And when they walk in my office and present you can tell that they know what they’re talking about.

Entrepreneur 306

Entrepreneur Startup Outsource Development Customer 306

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 27, 2019

The deck itself was produced by a committee of functional team lead who were asked to do 5–7 slides each for an update. Each section head reads his / her 5–7 slides. If you put up 5 slides on “what should we order for lunch today” the board will spend 30 minutes debating that. There are too many pages. It passes the weight test.

Startup 226

Startup Slides Metrics News 226

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 3, 2010

Each sales person tends to slot in their own slides to win deals or to position things in their own words or style in order to win deals. I have written about how to do a demo before (even though this was in the context of a VC pitch much of it applies). Sales Decks – Most companies have a standards sales deck.

Sales 296

Sales Pricing Startup Customer 296

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 24, 2016

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. In a perfect world you’d know the issues you want to discuss well in advance and you’d prepare a deck to guide the discussion. Here’s the reality.

Guide 196

Guide Startup Metrics Conference 196

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 23, 2014

There has been much discussion in the past few years of the changing structure of the venture capital industry. The rise of “micro VCs” or seed-stage funds. The rise of alternative sources of capital (crowd funding and the like). On the surface the narratives have been. Why is this?

Venture Capital 398

Venture Capital Technical Review Startup Seed Funding 398

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 19, 2009

I had previously raised VC in 1999, 2000, 2001 and 2005. I had seen many cycles and decided that since I was going to do it all over again I should write about it. In case VC’s haven’t figured this out yet, shit rolls downhill. No prizes for guessing which VCs I didn’t work with (and still won’t).

Venture Capital 274

Venture Capital Blogging Startup Slides 274

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 13, 2011

I recently filmed a show for This Week in Venture Capital in which I talked about how to prepare for a VC meeting: whom you’ll meet, who should attend from your side, what materials you should bring and how you should run the meeting. The “Triple Play&# of VC Presentations. I funded them 8 weeks later.

Venture Capital 299

Venture Capital Slides Technical Advisors Startup 299

Tech Zulu Event

AUGUST 28, 2012

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. As a journalist, I’m glad it happened to me so I can write about it.

Startup 100

Startup Ideas San Diego Mentor 100

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 1, 2010

There has been much discussion about VCs doing seed funding in the past year. I’ve written about it myself (Is VC Seed Funding Dead?) and (Is There Really a Signaling Problem with VC Seed Funding?). There is a structural reason that VCs are investing at early stages, 2. Short summary of my posts: 1.

Seed Funding 298

Seed Funding Funding Venture Capital GRP Partners 298

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 4, 2016

.” There are a lot of data points that one can observer to get a sense of the venture capital markets – both LP fundings into venture and VC financings of startups. They point to some widely known facts: financings & valuations are up massively over the past 7 years and non-VC money has entered the system.

Venture Capital 150

Venture Capital Startup Course Marketing 150

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 13, 2013

I spoke a lot about the need for “personal branding” which I plan to write about soon. It was like nobody would give me any respect and they just saw me as the guy who goes and talks to senior people who does PowerPoint slides. If I write $2 million and we hit a bump in the road, I can write another $2 million.

Startup 337

Startup Entrepreneur Ideas Venture Capital 337

SoCal CTO

DECEMBER 1, 2010

aka: An Open Letter to the Next Big Social Network) - 500 Hats , November 1, 2010 I've held off writing this post for a long time, because I couldn't quite get my head around all the issues. But I didn’t write it for you; I wrote it for myself. think his slides are great (and by far much easier on the eye then mine.).

Technical Review 175

Technical Review Startup Product Technology 175

Berkonomics

DECEMBER 17, 2020

You will have to hone your story well, down to fifteen minutes and perhaps fifteen slides in your presentation. This class of investor typically writes checks from $50,000 to $250,000. These firms will continue to finance the company without VC money required, and in return keep the capital structure simple for the life of the company.

Equity 156

Equity Technical Review Class Organization 156

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 21, 2010

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.

Slides 346

Slides Software Review Blogging Venture Capital 346

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 28, 2016

He is now a VC a Mithril Capital , which was co-founded by Peter Thiel. The book is a memoir about an improbable journey from the working-class Hillbilly roots of Appalachia to the elite corridors of one of the top law schools in the US and the world of venture capital. This is where Sliding Doors creeps in.

Class 211

Class Education Slides Venture Capital 211