4 Questions and 4 Pressure Tests To Decipher A VC’s Interest In Your Company
I have heard from a number of entrepreneurs over the past couple of months about how they wished VCs would give them a “quick no” more often. I think it’s a totally fair critique and have tried to improve in this area myself. In lieu of a “quick no”, I thought I’d give entrepreneurs 4 questions and 4 pressure tests to help you decipher a VC’s level of interest. These questions presume that you have already given the VC an initial pitch of your business, so they have enough information to at least be initially interested. After thinking about this post, I have a renewed personal commitment to make my interest level clear and prompt so that there’s nothing to “decipher”. A good working relationship should start before an investment is closed – so while I hope the advice is helpful in general, I hope that it’s advice you don’t have to take with me.
Niel Robertson
Mr. Robertson is a seasoned veteran of venture-backed startups. His in-depth experience is focused in technology companies, where new product research, software development, technical marketing and external evangelism were combined as effective tools for success. Mr.
Joe McNally’s Blog
We celebrated Earth Day this past week. This observance has been around for a while now, and back in the 70′s I was occasionally assigned to cover some of the events. I shot the above for UPI one year, at an Earth Day observance at the UN. I recall it being the usual, uh, cluster….k, in NY press terminology, with all the papers, the wires, and the TV folks angling for angles and exclusives.
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.
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3DRobotics Visit Site Acquired by Google 12/11 Visit Site Appcelerator Visit Site
Venture Capital (VC) Blog Directory – 2011 Edition
This is the 4th edition of the Venture Capital Blog Directory (1st edition, 2nd edition, 3rd edition). This directory includes 149 venture capital, microVC/seed, and growth equity blogs. The imperfect statistic used to rank these blogs is their average monthly uniques in Q410 from Compete (more methodology info below). Blogs that have seen increased traffic over Q409 by 1,000+ uniques/month are highlighted in bold. There is an additional list below of VC blogs below that had insufficient Compete data. To subscribe to the top 15 VC blogs through Google Reader, click here: Top 15 VC Blogs.
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)
Meeting with a VC
Much has been written about the VC process over the years. The best VC and founder blogs have a done an amazing job at shedding some light and advice on a process that had previously been mysterious and confusing. Some of the important ways to prepare are to choose your VC targets wisely, do they have the same style as you do, do they share your vision, check references, and be clear about your objectives in the meeting. Partnering with a VC is a big one and should not be considered lightly. Yesterday, Mark Suster shared his thoughts about how to best prepare for the actual meeting itself. Mark describes a number of things in his post including who should be in the room, who should do the talking and an outline for your powerpoint deck.
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