Going to Raise VC? Here’s a Primer on Process, People & Powerpoint Deck. If you want a very quick primer on all the stuff nobody ever tells you about raising venture capital check out this video where Mark Jeffrey & I break it down on This Week in VC. A summary of what we discussed is below: Not 100% in order of the video, but close. All of this is covered in more detail on the TWiVC video above (and much of it is covered in text on this blog on the “Raising VC” tab) 1. 2. Meet with one person from the firm – partner or associate. 3. 1 or more can attend first meeting depending on strength of your team. 4. 5. 6. Bio of top 3 people in the company. You can vary from this but these are the key themes are the ones you need to cover. The “exit” slide is controversial but as I discuss in the video – necessary no matter what anybody else tells you.
Lightspeed Venture Partners Blog. Business Intelligence (BI) is the gift that keeps on giving. For years, startups have popped up, promising better insights and faster decision making capabilities, consistently resulting in new waves of highly valued companies. Take a look at the past decade, which has seen massive consolidation as well as a hot new set of public companies. For example, SAP snapped up Business Objects for $6.8B in 2009, IBM acquired Cognos for $5B in 2008, and Oracle acquired Hyperion for $3.3B in 2007. The most recent set of public BI companies include upstarts such as Tableau, Qlikview, and Splunk which each captured the markets’ imagination with promises of Big Data and Analytics.
Increasingly, BI has been recognized as a strategic tool by the world’s most successful and nimble enterprises which run their businesses on metrics and use BI tools to rapidly make data-driven decisions. However, despite the steady progress in technology, there is still a problem with BI. Pivoting. Late last year, Aaron Batalion (one of the co-founders of Living Social, a Lightspeed Portfolio company) gave a talk about the many pivots that led Living Social to their current business of local deals. I think this is a fascinating topic. I had dinner with some terrific entrepreneurs recently, including the CEOs of Slide, SayNow (videoegg), Triggit, all companies that made at least two major pivots before getting to where they ended up, and we discussed the topic of pivoting at some length. Here are my notes from the discussion: Pivoting has two components, knowing when to quit plan A, and taking on plan B.
It’s easy to pivot towards doing more of something that is working and users like. It’s also easy to stop doing something that gets no traction. What’s hard is stopping doing something that is just doing OK, but that is usually the right thing to do.Some entrepreneurs want to build companies, not products. What lessons have you learned from pivoting?
How To Pitch - Genesis Partners (Gil Dibner) The Art of the VC Pitch: A Roundup of Advice from 6 VCs. I have a few different friends who are trying their hands at entrepreneurship; some have met with investors already, while others are closing in on their meeting date with anticipation and uncertainty. Based on hearing some of the things they were doing to prepare for their meeting, I thought it would be wise to roundup some of the best pitch advice I've come across not only for them but for the other first time entrepreneurs out there who may not know what typical VC pitches are like. Pitches range in length from 5 quick minutes to a half hour or more, but what I have consistently seen while researching this topic is that no matter what length the pitch is, the key is to keep things simple and understandable while not patronizing the VC.
But don't take my word for it, here is advice from six venture capitalists on various aspects of the all important pitch. David S. Rose - How to Pitch an Angel (or VC) Chris Dixon - Pitch yourself, not your idea Bijan Sabet - Startup Presentations. Chris dixon's blog / Pitch yourself, not your idea. There is a widespread myth that the most important part of building a great company is coming up with a great idea. This myth is reflected in popular movies and books: someone invents the Post-it note or cocktail umbrellas and becomes an overnight millionaire.
It is also perpetuated by experienced business people who, for the most part, don’t believe it. Venture capitalists often talk about “the best way to pitch your idea” and “honing your elevator pitch.” Most business schools have business plan contests which are essentially beauty pageants for startup ideas. All of this reinforces the myth that the idea is primary.
The reality is ideas don’t matter that much. First of all, in almost all startups, the idea changes – often dramatically – over time. What you should really be focused on when pitching your early stage startup is pitching yourself and your team. Of course a great way to show you can build stuff is to build a prototype of the product you are raising money for. Pitching 101: Be Prepared « Five Years Too Late. Pitching 101: Be Prepared Eric Wiesen Today’s installment of Pitching 101 was motivated by a great recent presentation I saw. The message this time is – be prepared for each pitch. Two young entrepreneurs had been referred to RRE by one of our portfolio companies and we set up a time for them to come and tell me about the business and what they think it can be. These are guys a couple years out of college who have bootstrapped the business for the first year and who have achieved significant proof points while working on the company part-time and holding down “day jobs”.
Separate from the business itself (which I liked), it was immediately clear that these entrepreneurs were well-prepared for this meeting. Is it work to do what these guys did, especially if you are pitching a lot of firms? If you’re wondering what happened, the company doing the pitching isn’t going to be an RRE investment, for a few reasons. In sum, take an hour to know the person or people you’re pitching. Like this: