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I asked a friend Bill Romans to recommend to me smaller VC funds that like to offer smaller amounts of funding and are happy to work with $1-2M and variations around that level. These guys are VCs but tend to be more boutique or smaller funds that prefer a smaller round to the bigger names.…
Tim Ferriss has had the foresight to ask some of the presenters at this years TiE conference (TiE’s annual conference on entrepreneurship, TiECON 2009 May 15/16) some very useful questions: What is the best pitch meeting that you remember and why? What are the most common mistakes or assumptions smart founders make in pitch meetings…
As you may know I work extensively with 3 of the World’s Top 10 business schools and I regularly have to help MBA’s work on their business plans. In working with them I help them shape their plans and eventually I often have to rate and mark them as part of their course grade! In…
Below is the presentation given during by Adeo Ressi at Web 2.0 in New York. The talk focuses on helping companies find the “right” investor, versus just any interested party. It’s a very useful deck and from a very thoughtful guy that has been around this game a few times. http://documents.scribd.com/ScribdViewer.swf?document_id=6146822&access_key=key-bj5yvf3bqjxa4hs18wf&page=&version=1&auto_size=true&viewMode=
This is another question I have had to deal with and have got asked in the past. How do you structure a business, or hire or develop a startup in a way not to turn off the VC’s at a later stage. You have to consider the cap table, the business location and structure, the…
I found this useful feedback to a question I often get here, Matt McCall of Draper Fisher Jurvetson Portage Venture Partners lays out a useful set of numbers he thinks are correct as a VC for 2008. I thought I would lay out historically the average benchmarks with some caveats. The first caveat is that…
Interesting spin on the VC pitch at Venture Hacks by Eric Ries, a founder of IMVU and an advisor to Kleiner Perkins (He’s also a really nice and modest guy!): Summary: Pitches usually fail because they answer the wrong questions. The right questions depend on the stage of your business—for example, some businesses are just…
In a previous post I gave you my take on raising funds in 2008 from the VC community, this was drawn from VCs I know and other entrepreneurs: Permanent Link to Important things to know about VC funding in 2008 In it I am told that you shouldn’t bother to try and get any attention…
If one person I know really has a great perspective on VC it’s Marc and he has written 3 blog posts on the topic that every startup should read and learn from – they are punchy, unbiased and really on the money: The truth about venture capitalists, Part 1 The truth about venture capitalists, Part…
Well done you have managed to get a VC presentation or to stand up to pitch to a group of investors, now what? The investor(s) will probably pour over your business plan in advance, looking for chinks in the proposal. There may be three or four people on their side of the table if it’s…
This is a short but important thing to learn if you want to convince a VC about anything…avoid the fluff and hyperbole – cut out those “adjectives” when trying to persuade. David Hornik of August Capital puts it this way: ….one of my biggest pet peeves when it comes to company pitches (and board meetings…
A huge amount has been written on this topic, but when it comes down to it only a few things count to get the VC funds you need. Sure you need to find a way in through your network, and then you have to get the interested enough to read your punchy exec summary and…
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