This is part of my ongoing series “Pitching a VC” – the outline is here . You’ve pitched several angels and VC’s.  Your friends and advisers tell you that this means you need revenue because in this economy VC’s will only fund businesses with revenue.  Traction really is about Everybody seems to like you but nobody seems to be getting out their checkbooks.  Most of them are telling you that they just need to see a bit of traction before they’d be prepared to invest.

This is part of my ongoing series “ Pitching a VC .” The “Triple Play” of VC Presentations large part of my series has been outlining what the typical VC PowerPoint presentation should look like.  Some Some readers have commented that in today’s world you shouldn’t even need a PowerPoint presentation – in this era you should always photo courtesy of Atlanta Braves 8221;

I had previously raised VC in 1999, 2000, 2001 and 2005.  In case VC’s haven’t figured this out yet, shit rolls downhill.  My blog linked to Brad Feld’s blog because I was so grateful for his series on term sheets and he was one of the biggest reasons that as a VC I felt compelled to blog.  On December 3rd Brad Feld wrote a one paragraph blog post On December 2nd, 2006 I wrote the blog post published later in this post when I was CEO of startup Koral about my experiences in pitching VCs.  After my company was acquired by Salesforce.com I was asked to stop

This is part of my blog series “ Pitching a VC .” I’ve sat through a lot of VC pitches and having been CEO of an enterprise software firm for many years I’ve also sat through many customer meetings with sales teams. The presenter comes out of the meeting proud at having gotten through all 30 slides (and maybe even a demo) with a bunch of smiling faces and nodding heads and no discussion.  After 8221; There is one classic mistake that I see across both types of meetings – “the tell & sell”  presentation.  This

In my previous post, The VC Ice Age is Thawing (for now) I wrote about the reasons why the VC market came to a screeching halt in September 2008 and remained largely shut until at least April 2009.  There There are now signs the VC market has gathered pace meaning it’s a great time to be fund raising.  This There’s no doubt (at least anecdotally) that This post highlights some of the reasons why the market is moving again and what entrepreneurs should do about this. The real irony of the market thaw is that the biggest symbol of the freeze as I mentioned in my last

I attended the Los Angeles Dealmaker event that featured several angel and seed-stage investors on the panel:  Jarl Mohn, Scott Sangster ( Organic Startup ), Rob Hayes ( First Round Capital ), and Thomas McInerney (TGM).  The The audience of entrepreneurs were witness to some candid discussion on how to make contact, structure deals, and manage relationships with angel investors as well as some of the differences between angel investors and venture capital investors. If you attend many of these events, you often hear the question, “How am I supposed to contact an angel investor or venture capital investor?”

If you demo your product (which is always great) then tell us part of the story while you’re demo’ing.  Talk I spotted my fellow VC Leo Spiegel (from Mission Ventures) who had spoken previously to the same group and asked about his experiences. My choices – talk about the VC industry and where it is heading (which is what the dean asked me to cover), talk about how to start companies (which is partly what Lada Most people suck at presenting to big groups.  It’s It’s a shame because the ability to nail these presentations at

This is a story of one of the risks of venture capital. But some companies have entrepreneurs that seem talented on paper, are in a space that seems interesting to investors and are able to raise venture capital early in the company’s existence.  y company had raised a seed round of capital in late 1999 even before either of us were full time in the company (ominous side note: on the way to pitch our seed investor, Delta Partners, a man walking right in front of me died of a massive heart This is part of my ongoing series Startup Advice .  When you’re

I attended the Los Angeles Dealmaker event that featured several angel and seed-stage investors on the panel:  Jarl Mohn, Scott Sangster ( Organic Startup ), Rob Hayes ( First Round Capital ), and Thomas McInerney (TGM).  The The audience of entrepreneurs were witness to some candid discussion on how to make contact, structure deals, and manage relationships with angel investors as well as some of the differences between angel investors and venture capital investors. If you attend many of these events, you often hear the question, “How am I supposed to contact an angel investor or venture capital investor?”

I attended the Los Angeles Dealmaker event that featured several angel and seed-stage investors on the panel:  Jarl Mohn, Scott Sangster ( Organic Startup ), Rob Hayes ( First Round Capital ), and Thomas McInerney (TGM).  The The audience of entrepreneurs were witness to some candid discussion on how to make contact, structure deals, and manage relationships with angel investors as well as some of the differences between angel investors and venture capital investors. If you attend many of these events, you often hear the question, “How am I supposed to contact an angel investor or venture capital investor?”