This is part of my ongoing series “Pitching a VC” – the outline is here . You’ve pitched several angels and VC’s.  Most of them are telling you that they just need to see a bit of traction before they’d be prepared to invest. Your friends and advisers tell you that this means Everybody seems to like you but nobody seems to be getting out their checkbooks.  Unfortunately your advisers are wrong.

But if you have approached a senior member of your industry and if they’re on 4 advisory boards, have done 3 angel investments and probably have a full time gig themselves – it is hard to really get into the details of your company.  At a minimum their angel investments will likely take precedence. Ask for small investments This is part of my ongoing series Startup Advice .  Many startup companies hire advisory boards. 

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 You want to build a dialogue where you get to know the VC with whom you’re meeting.  It’s photo courtesy of Atlanta Braves 8221;

This is part of my ongoing series about Raising Venture Capital . few years ago it became fashionable for large VC’s to do seed funding.  If the large VC doesn’t agree to do your A round then you’re in a bit of trouble.  Because as a potential A round investor I’m thinking to myself, “if the large This posting was inspired by an email from Rajat Suri who wrote me an email in response to Chris Dixon’s blog post (link below) from August, which recently re-ran on Business Insider and has generated much Twitter chatter. A

Last week, I was on a panel with other investors discussing the “do’s� and “don’ts� of angel and venture capital investing some one from the audience fired a series of intriguing compounded questions � why are the VC’s so illusive?, � All valid questions and valid statements – the event made me think that entrepreneurs view of the equity investment community is entirely different than that of the inner circle and this mismatch of perceptions is not disruptive and unhealthy. why don’t they have all their information available? Why don’t they

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 ongoing series, “ Pitching a VC .” 8221;  Getting a meeting with a prominent angel or VC is difficult enough.  Some Some advice on how to do that was covered in this link – Getting Access to a VC .  This I spoke about the topic on Fox Business News yesterday in a great session with TechCrunch50 winner RedBeacon This post covers the day after.  The Day After (the waiting game begins)

This is part of my ongoing series “ Start Up Advice ” but I’d really like to call this post, “VC Advice.” We exchanged ideas when I was an entrepreneur along side him in NorCal in 05-07 and my point-of-view on founder / VC relationships hasn’t shifted even 1% since I went to the dark side. We could do more in 2010 with more VC investment; the doubling assumes only ratable increase in marketing spend to 8221; If a company has reached a level of success, has been around for a few years and you believe the company has potential to

In the first post in this three part series I described why I believe the VC market froze between September 2008 – April 2009 .  In In the second post I argued that as of September 2009 the pace of VC investments has increased rapidly (at least for software / Internet investments – the only sector on which I’m competent to comment), but only for those remaining VCs who have new enough funds and aren’t plagued by “the triage problem.” 8221;  This is a direct result of innovation around the iPhone / mobile computing, Facebook / Social Networks and Twitter (as distinct from Social Networks).  It

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. In the best case they might prefer to ask you questions but you didn’t prompt them and they’re being polite (although this is less likely in VC who are not known for being wallflowers !). 8221; There is one classic mistake that I see across both types of meetings – “the tell & sell”  presentation.