Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 18, 2014

It got me thinking about the advice that I often give to new VCs. So the advice I’ve been giving many VCs from my experiences is that “in VC it’s important to play offense, not defense.” I don’t want any formal pitches. It’s exhausting. Perhaps unsustainable. Lines, Not Dots. And so forth.

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This is going to be BIG.

JULY 30, 2012

Interacting with a venture firm these days can feel like ordering from Seamless. Call me old fashioned, but what happened to the days where the criteria for being a full time investor at a venture firm meant having an expertise in the functional areas of a company--some product, maybe some tech, PR, marketing, etc.?

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Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 31, 2010

This was evident at the Twiistup pre-event company pitch last week at UCLA. I spotted my fellow VC Leo Spiegel (from Mission Ventures) who had spoken previously to the same group and asked about his experiences. Tags: Entrepreneur Advice Start-up Advice Startup Advice. They had more advanced degrees.

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TechCrunch

APRIL 25, 2023

But dealmaking is idiosyncratic: a few investors might be content to make a deal over coffee, but early-stage teams still need a sturdy pitch deck or memo they can leave behind. I’m going to save you some time: many (if not most) of you are not yet ready to pitch an investor. Just saying your product is AI-driven will not cut it.

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Startup Blogpost

NOVEMBER 17, 2023

20 Tips for Pitching New Business Ideas to Potential Investors To provide you with the best advice on pitching new business ideas to investors, we asked twenty CEOs, Founders, and other professionals for their top tips. You should highlight the potential future earnings while pitching your proposal.

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This is going to be BIG.

SEPTEMBER 19, 2012

It would be months before Foursquare's first round touched off a NYC venture frenzy. While my company may not have lasted, and even though I swore to myself that I wouldn't do another startup--this recently launched new venture is moving forward with the help of some fantastic partners. VCs pitch for money, too.

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Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 3, 2011

My guess is that probably only 2-3 out of every hundred pitches I receive are from women. In my post on what has changed the venture capital industry more than any other factor I talked about Amazon.com’s role. The latest entrepreneur who has been pitching me, Shahed Khan , is only 16! But then the truth sets in.

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Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 20, 2012

Frankly, I think venture capital is that way, too. How does the world in Los Angeles intersect differently with venture capital? I t culminated in a series of blog posts I wrote while on Thanksgiving break that were transformational in giving me a mental model for what was important to me in venture. Board Meetings. Conferences.

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TechCrunch

FEBRUARY 14, 2023

I surveyed six seed- and early-stage investors to get their tactical advice for laid-off tech workers who are thinking about starting up. Most of them were so open to receiving pitches, they said we could include their contact information. How should we plan our spending? How should we think about runway and capital preservation?

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TechCrunch

NOVEMBER 19, 2021

This is a fantastic time to found a startup, but unless you plan to bootstrap it, you will still need to go through the laborious exercise of crafting a pitch deck. According to Jose Cayasso, CEO and co-founder of pitch deck design agency Slidebean, there are five slides where pretty much all founders miss the mark : Go-to-market.

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Entrepreneur's Handbook

NOVEMBER 29, 2022

You’ll receive practical startup advice straight to your inbox every week. Are you actually ready to pitch? When pitching, the startup has to put a number on the table. Thankfully, seasoned investor DC Palter offers some advice: Find the deal lead?—? Did you know the average new business pitch costs $450,000?!

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Entrepreneurs' Organization

JUNE 19, 2024

My first pitch was not to investors or potential clients; it was to my fiancée, convincing her to delay our wedding plans until Equifund was up and running — a promise that took significantly longer than the anticipated six months to fulfill. Weren’t entrepreneurs tired of the golden handcuffs of venture capitalists and bankers?

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TechCrunch

AUGUST 27, 2021

Korea Pavilion Pitch Session – Hosted by KOTRA. Tom Chi of At One Ventures will talk about the importance of investing in environmental and climate entrepreneurs. Buy one here and check out the breakout sessions for trends, advice and opportunities to help grow your business. Brought to you by Samsung Next.

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StartupNation

JUNE 1, 2021

Oftentimes, I read articles offering tips for entrepreneurs that revolve around generic advice on getting started. However, what is often direly needed is how to appeal to investors and raise smart money — knowledge that is essential for fundraising and a master key to building, accelerating and scaling your new venture. Keep it short.

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David Teten VC

JULY 27, 2021

Contestants pitch their legal product idea for a chance to win $5,000, tutoring, and more. The Baylor New Venture Competition is a business plan and elevator pitch competition for college students from around the globe. Student teams pitch and compete for more than $1.5 The competition has $50,000 in cash prizes.

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Jason Malki

MARCH 9, 2023

I had the pleasure of interviewing Karen Sheffield, the Founder & Managing Partner of Pachamama Ventures, a venture capital firm investing in US early-stage climate tech companies. What is your advice for someone trying to break into tech investing? I would break it down into 3 steps. This was very insightful.

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TechCrunch

APRIL 29, 2022

Dame shared one piece of advice that I’d never heard from an investor: more founders should learn to make themselves vulnerable. Pitch deck teardown: Minut. If you’d like to see your pitch deck featured on TechCrunch+, click through for details. Pitch Deck Teardown: Minut.

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AsiaTechDaily

NOVEMBER 16, 2022

Register Startup founders need to be authentic and prepared when they get the chance to meet prospective investors, according to Rex Fong, founding partner at investment and advisory group Capitale Ventures. Fong’s Capitale Ventures is an investment and advisory group with expertise in complex, cross-border transactions.

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This is going to be BIG.

JUNE 26, 2012

In venture capital, you say "no" a lot. I want your pitch to be the one I say yes to--and I want you to solve the inherent problems in your business model. Take pitches? Unfortunately, there's a lot of the "velvet rope" mentality going on in venture. When you say no a lot, you get good at it. It is your default response.

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Entrepreneurs' Organization

AUGUST 16, 2024

You get advice from people who have been where you are without worrying about damaging your reputation. Unlike other business owner communities, people aren’t joining to pitch you on their company’s products or services, so you can build real relationships and help one another. “EOA

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Both Sides of the Table

MAY 19, 2020

with $15 million to Prove It The venture capital world has started firing up a few cylinders again and looking for businesses that it believes will help us all succeed in ways that resonate with new ways of working as we begin to return to work. Community-building is advice I give to nearly every startup team with whom I work.

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Entrepreneur's Handbook

DECEMBER 24, 2021

Otherwise, you lose sales even before you start Photo by Christina @ wocintechchat.com on Unsplash Do not mistake the perfect pitch for the well-rehearsed (read: memorized) presentation. The cookie-cutter pitch presentation kills your sales pipeline before you actually have one. My team members call it the Pitch Perfect experience.

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TechCrunch

AUGUST 27, 2021

Tapping into someone else’s experience is a tried-and-true method, which is why two-time Y Combinator participant Chris Morton wrote a guest post for Extra Crunch with advice for founders hoping to be accepted by the famed accelerator. Latin America’s increasingly dynamic venture capital scene has been making headlines of late.

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TechCrunch

MARCH 6, 2021

Next up is TechCrunch Early Stage, our yearly event that is all about tactical advice to help new and first-time founders navigate the Wild West world that is venture capital and startups. Announcing the Early Stage Pitch-Off judges. 11 words and phrases to cut from your VC pitch deck. Across the week. Okta-Auth0 deal.

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TechCrunch

JULY 29, 2022

Pitch Deck Teardown: Alto Pharmacy’s $200M Series E deck. Pitch Deck Teardown: Alto Pharmacy’s $200M Series E deck. 8 fintech VCs discuss the shifting investing landscape and how to pitch them in Q3 2022. Justin Overdorff, partner, Lightspeed Venture Partners. Do all of that before you start the countdown.”

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TechCrunch

FEBRUARY 19, 2021

March 3 is your opportunity to hear from and engage with the people who, through entrepreneurship, venture capital, labor organizing and advocacy, are both using and challenging tech to disrupt the status quo for the betterment of all. Tune in a get ready to take notes — the advice you hear could help you improve your pitch deck.

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TechCrunch

OCTOBER 22, 2020

Today, pitch competitions, incubators, accelerators, VCs and angel groups proliferate. Venture Kick was launched in 2007 with the vision to double the number of spin-offs from Swiss universities and draws from a jury of more than 150 leading startup experts in Switzerland. Philipp Stauffer, partner, FYRFLY Venture Partners.

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American Entrepreneurship

MAY 31, 2024

Entrepreneurs seek to find the right investor and to make the best pitch when the opportunity comes Entrepreneurs start their companies with great passion and big dreams. That includes angel investors, venture capitalists, and institutional funders associated with various stages of a startup’s growth.

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Hunter Walk

AUGUST 23, 2023

Seriously though, were there things you saw as a founder – or an angel investor in other people’s companies – that informed your own approach to venture now? Michael Mignano: Throughout my time building Anchor, I met and pitched many, many VCs. The investor’s advice came ringing back. Was I right?

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Entrepreneurs' Organization

APRIL 9, 2019

As co-founder at Radical Ventures and Singularity University ’s chair for entrepreneurship and open innovation, Pascal is focused on creating new business models for success and positively embracing disruption. I hear way too many entrepreneurs pitch stuff that I don’t understand—and I’m sure they don’t understand either.

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Startup Grind

AUGUST 15, 2018

He has worked with several startups, invested in companies like Mayvenn, Gimlet Media, Blavity, Airspace Technologies, Codeverse, and many others Pitch your startup for a chance to meet with Cross Culture VC Q&A: What is your / your fund's mission? We started to invest out of our inaugural fund, Cross Culture Ventures I in April 2015.

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StartupNation

MAY 24, 2021

While the pandemic has certainly had an impact on the startup space, speculations were off about one thing: venture capital. It didn’t dry up: Venture investors poured $150 billion into North American companies in 2020, up about 7% from 2019 levels. Part of this could be the result of the pitch. Most now occur online.

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Innovation 2 Enterprise

MARCH 26, 2024

I still regularly meet with i2E for advice as I’m building my company. As a woman founder, what advice do you have for other aspiring women entrepreneurs who may be facing barriers or doubts about pursuing their own ventures? Practice in pitching and answering tough questions has prepared us to begin raising funding.

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AsiaTechDaily

OCTOBER 31, 2023

Seung-jin Park, CEO of AGMO/Cindy Jin, Managing Director of Softbank Ventures Asia/Jae-wook Park, Chairman of the Korea Startup Forum/Young Lee, Minister of the Ministry of SMEs and Startups/Sungjin Choi, CEO of the Korea Startup Forum/Ha-yeon Kim, CEO of NanumVitamin/Josh Choi, Executive Director of COMEUP What Awaits You at COMEUP 2023?

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TechCrunch

APRIL 15, 2023

After a Tahoe-based tech conference, Sheel Mohnot, the fintech investor behind Better Tomorrow Ventures, is beatboxing in his head — all day, every day. In the rest of this newsletter we’re talking about Amazon’s new bed, and bad advice from investors. Pitch decks and term sheets welcome too. No pitches, please.

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TechCrunch

JUNE 10, 2022

As I’ve said previously, if your name doesn’t appear on the team slide of your company’s pitch deck, this is a time to be cautious: Update your resume, dial back your summer vacation plans and start adding more to your rainy day fund. Jonathan Metrick, chief growth officer, Portage Ventures. This might take a little time.”.

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Jason Malki

JANUARY 15, 2024

Charting the Path to Success in Tech Investing: An Exclusive Interview with GoAhead Ventures’ Founding Trio GoAhead Ventures (“GoAhead”) is a Silicon Valley based venture capital firm founded by three Stanford graduates: Takeshi “TK” Mori, Clancey Stahr and Phil Brady (the “Managing Partners”). This was very insightful.

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