This is going to be BIG.

JUNE 16, 2014

How long does it take from first meeting a VC to getting cash in the bank? If all my deals came as intros from trusted connections that I know for years versus at founder pitch events that''s interesting data. If you meet someone at a pitch event, they''ve already got a company and they''re looking to close as quickly as possible.

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VC pitching networking venture capital 418

This is going to be BIG.

DECEMBER 21, 2010

Personally, I find pitch events to be a little bit contrived. However, the innovation community seems to be in love with this format, so you can’t be a VC without watching a bunch of them. For the most part, while the companies may be interesting, the actual pitches are usually so-so. Those stand out. That's why I have a job.

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pitching VC technology communities 327

This is going to be BIG.

DECEMBER 5, 2012

What is it about me that makes you want to pitch me? When you're pitching for a million bucks "I've never heard of them" is not an acceptable answer for when I ask about the team that tried to do the same thing as you just two years ago. 5) Aim for me to hear about you before you pitch. 4) Do your homework. Getting quoted?

VC 360

VC pitching disruption advice 360

David Teten VC

SEPTEMBER 6, 2018

Over the past decade, I’ve (somewhat accidentally) put together on this blog a syllabus on how to launch, manage, and invest a VC fund. See How Private Equity and VC Investors Are Using Social Media. 4) Originate investments. See How to Judge Investment Pitches. 8) Monitor and report investments.

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VC investing investment venture capital 58

Hunter Walk

FEBRUARY 6, 2024

If you are a founder and you are experiencing new or renewed tension in your conversations with your VC investors, it’s worth re-examining whether you all have a shared view of the likely outcome of your company and whether you’re both as excited about what that outcome means.

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venture capital real estate capital ventures 54

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 9, 2009

This is part of my ongoing series, “ Pitching a VC.&#. I recently wrote a blog post here in which I argued that the best VC meetings are discussions and not sales pitches. Many people agreed and added that even the best sales meetings are also discussions and not pitches. A Tale of Two Pitches.

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pitching VC advice strategy 288

TechCrunch

DECEMBER 28, 2022

For people in the demographic I invest in, it’s quite atypical for that to be a thing. If you do have something that’s working, and you really feel like you can scale this to be something very large, it’s okay to go and find a VC partner — someone like [the pre-seed stage fund] Precursor.

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networking founder investing investment 99

Startup Grind

AUGUST 13, 2018

Some of Ann’s investments include Lyft, Ayasdi, Xamarin, Refinery29, JoyRun, TaskRabbit, and Modcloth. Given the success of her investments she was on the 2017 Midas List of top 100 venture capitalists. Pitch your startup for an opportunity to meet with Floodgate. What and when was your very first investment?

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VC entrepreneurship pitching strategy 111

Dream It

FEBRUARY 5, 2021

Keep reading for some more of the most common mistakes startups make when pitching and for Steve’s tips on how to fix them. Investors want to hear, “Our unique insight is __”… in your pitch 2. VCs are judging your ability to sell If you are running a B2B company, investors know that you need to “sell” to potential early adopters.

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startup founder founder startup pitching 397

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 1, 2009

In the first post in this three part series I described why I believe the VC market froze between September 2008 – April 2009. I’m not a doomsday guy, but just believe that we won’t see a V shaped recovery, which could make VC funding more difficult for tech start-ups (don’t shoot the messenger!).

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VC startup advice innovation 269

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 4, 2013

As a VC you want to feel like you have “proprietary sources” of deal flow. I eventually stumbled on to the best source of high-quality deal flow imaginable – blogging. There is one source that was always problematic for me – intros from investment bankers. They are venture bankers not investment bankers.

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VC advice pitching entrepreneurs 347

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 16, 2017

Every tech or major news journal in the country is preparing to write their Snap, Inc (creators of Snapchat, Spectacles, etc) stories and many of them seem to want a “How does it feel to have missed this investment story.” My job as a VC isn’t to beat myself up or any other partner up for the one deal we didn’t do. Mostly kidding.

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investing investment VC pitching 214

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 3, 2010

I recently wrote a blog post on understanding how the size and age of a venture capital fund might affect you when you’re raising money. Because it is a “series&# I plan to get into some of the deeper complexities of funds such as “cross over funds&# and “why VC’s hate to price their own deals&# at a later stage.

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VC venture capital entrepreneurs real estate 265

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 22, 2021

LPs, VCs, everyone. In fact, I wrote a previous blog post on “ Why Successful People Focus on the Bottom End of the Funnel.” OK, so you’ve found your target LPs who invest in funds at your stage. We invest 40% of our dollars in Southern California firms?—?and it’s not just startups who do it. We love first meetings!

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investing investment ventures pitching 375

Hunter Walk

SEPTEMBER 12, 2022

The common VC passes are pretty cliche. And while I passed on leading their seed, I did contribute a smaller amount into the financing, along with three subsequent pro rata/super pro rata investments. But the initial pass was, in investment terms, a huge mistake and something I regret. Would Have In The First Place.

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VC SaaS culture advice 80

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 25, 2009

Beware of VC Seagulls, who shit on you and then fly away (or worse yet leave you with Red Herrings). I write this post as a warning to pick your VC’s carefully. I like to say to first-time entrepreneurs, picking a VC is more permanent than marriage. I guarantee this is a bad VC. There are many great VCs.

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VC board consulting advice 297

This is going to be BIG.

JUNE 9, 2020

If you’re a white professional in venture, you might feel uncomfortable tweeting or blogging about race. If you're in a more privileged position with lots of VC connections to pitch, you’ll either do one of the following things: You'll come right back at me, tell me why and how I'm wrong—because at this point you have nothing to lose.

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founder pitching VC opportunity 300

David Teten VC

JANUARY 21, 2021

His work on VC and small communities can be found at greatercolorado.vc/blog. This essay is part of a series on alternative VC: I: Revenue-Based Investing: a new option for founders who care about control. II: Who are the major Revenue-Based Investing VCs? IV: Should your new VC fund use Revenue-Based Investing?

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investing investment VC SaaS 49

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 24, 2011

I invested in LA-based Gogii , one of the fastest growing, most exciting mobile social networking companies you’ve never heard of and maker of a product called textPlus. And if you are – what on earth are you reading such a boring blog as this?!? I only recently invested and I only got here through persistence.

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investing investment VC board 310

This is going to be BIG.

MAY 26, 2022

You’d like to believe the world is completely meritocratic—that you’ll put your heads down to work on your company, hit all your metrics, and just show up on the doorstep of a VC firm who will just be bowled over at the fantastic little company you’ve created. Well, they’d know it if you wrote a book, of course!

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founder pitching VC creativity 261

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. I wrote the summary notes in this blog post. The “Triple Play&# of VC Presentations.

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VC board pitching venture capital 299

This is going to be BIG.

APRIL 29, 2011

I had an interesting conversation with an entrepreneur last week about how he decided which VCs he was going to pitch. No matter how much I or any of the team here at First Round made themselves accessable through Office Hours, LinkedIn, Twitter, speaking, blogging, etc., A lot of VCs ask to be introduced through someone.

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VC pitching entrepreneurs networking 303

David Teten VC

JANUARY 21, 2021

His work on VC and small communities can be found at greatercolorado.vc/blog. This essay is part of a series on alternative VC: I: Revenue-Based Investing: a new option for founders who care about control. II: Who are the major Revenue-Based Investing VCs? IV: Should your new VC fund use Revenue-Based Investing?

investing 40

investing investment VC SaaS 40

David Teten VC

DECEMBER 3, 2019

However, in private markets, there is more room to optimize across all 11 steps of the investing process: firm management , marketing, fundraising , origination , manage relationships, due diligence, negotiation, monitoring, portfolio acceleration , reporting, and. The 11 Steps of Investing in Private Companies. 1) Manage the firm .

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technology investing investment VC 95

David Teten VC

MAY 16, 2017

I particularly like OpenLP.com , Origins , and the Raise blog , all of which include content from multiple LPs. . Limited partner due diligence on VC and private equity funds. I’ve collected several lists of limited partners focused on VC. Aggreg8r: LPs in Emerging Micro-VCs. Relationship Science.

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ventures investing investment VC 74

David Teten VC

DECEMBER 4, 2019

However, in private markets, there is more room to optimize across all 11 steps of the investing process: firm management , marketing, fundraising , origination , manage relationships, due diligence, negotiation, monitoring, portfolio acceleration , reporting, and. The 11 Steps of Investing in Private Companies. 1) Manage the firm .

technology 81

technology investing investment ventures 81

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 9, 2014

If I had to put a number on it I’d say 1 in 20 pitches – maybe 1 in 30 – are by an entrepreneur who comes across as truly passionate about her project. On reflection of the role that I want to play as a VC it is clearly in the camp of passion. I’m a VC. But the two can of course go hand-in-hand.

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peer-to-peer VC pitching entrepreneurs 373

This is going to be BIG.

JANUARY 22, 2014

How many more investments could I do? These are things that other VCs think about, but founders who come to pitch don''t think about too much. When you blog, tweet , Instagram , etc., as a VC, sometimes your own website becomes an afterthought. Was the fund enough to keep me going? How where things going?

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pitching board VC opportunity 413

Startup Catalyst

NOVEMBER 22, 2017

In November 2017 we delivered our first Investor Mission, heading to San Francisco for an intensive week meeting with angels, VCs, corporate venture programs, accelerators, startups, pitch events, and dinners. The mission was led by Steve Baxter, an investor on Shark Tank and the current Queensland Chief Entrepreneur. Who we took.

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angel capital angel investing VC accelerator 100

TechCrunch

FEBRUARY 11, 2023

If you enjoy this newsletter, you should check out my personal blog too ! In the rest of this newsletter, we’ll talk about pitch deck teardowns and artificial intelligence. Read the entire analysis here and remember: If you want your own pitch deck teardown featured on TC+, here’s more information.

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pitching VC construction startup ecosystem 78

Entrepreneur's Handbook

FEBRUARY 4, 2021

While we’re passionate about helping founders turn their ideas into flourishing businesses, we also recognize the massive challenge that VCs face when raising their own early funds by courting the right limited partners (LPs) to get off the ground. But does it make sense to cast a wide net and contact as many LPs as possible?

peer-to-peer 114

peer-to-peer pitching VC strategy 114

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 14, 2015

Many entrepreneurs pitching err on the side of too much information. You feel very unique when you pitch your business yet three weeks later when you follow up on your VC pitches each partner has probably seen 15-20 more companies in that time and while she remembers you, she can’t quite, exactly remember what was unique about you.

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advice pitching disruption VC 360

David Teten VC

APRIL 13, 2021

Empirically, few small emerging investment managers hire placement agents, particularly in venture capital. Similarly, Elizabeth Yin of Hustle Fund highlights in her blog how she personally completed 345 meetings in a nine-month period for the firm’s first $11.5 Emerging managers are not a commodity, especially in VC.

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peer-to-peer venture capital VC networking 98

TechCrunch

DECEMBER 20, 2022

Blogs are a great example: Because they’re a cheap way to drive SEO, companies crank them out, then use KPIs like time on site, pages per session and social media likes to demonstrate how successful they’ve been. Banish vanity metrics from your startup’s pitch deck. 3 Black founders predict little will change in VC in 2023.

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founder pitching strategy VC 81

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 16, 2013

It’s the first EIR that we’ve had in the years that I’ve been with the firm and I hope will be the start of our investment in this program. We’re excited to continue to grow our investment professional staff and will continue to do so over the course of 2013 & 2014 with our new fund. But I loved his hustle.

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pitching advice VC entrepreneurs 372

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 25, 2013

But VC is like congress. As you can see from the chart their data suggests there are about $25 billion of VC distributions per year in the US. According to FLAG Capital there are 100 active VCs (as defined by making at least $1 million in VC per quarter for 4 consecutive quarters). Their data looks at tech VCs.

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VC peer-to-peer entrepreneurs board 374

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 27, 2013

Your goal should be to turn your VCs into extended members of your team to get real value from them. Understanding where your VC partner sits in their respective fund and where their fund is in the cycle of its investment lifecycle will help you understand your VCs behavior. What Rob wrote in his post is right.

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board VC advice pitching 365