Venture Hacks

If you’re a passionate entrepreneur, you can often see the vast potential for your product. In your head, the possibilities of the future branch out, with infinite forks and potential. When pitching to investors, you’ve learned to define your market as broadly as possible while remaining credible. So, it’s not surprising that you’re disappointed when investors don’t disclose a [...]

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Last week, I tweeted some thoughts for first-time entrepreneurs raising money and asked Naval, Chris Dixon, and Mark Suster to chime in. Here are the results.
Me
If this is your 1st time raising money…

It takes way longer than you think.
You’ll assume you’re much further along than you really are.
It’s not about optimizing the round, it’s about [...]

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The top 3 things we look for in the startups that apply to AngelList are initial traction, social proof, and product. The team is also obviously important, but good teams tend to have good traction, social proof, and products.
Since I was a child, people have asked me, “How much traction do investors want to see?” [...]

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Naval here. Adeo Ressi recently invited me to speak at the Silicon Valley Founder Institute. The topic was how to present to investors.
[Nivi: There's a lot of new stuff in this presentation — I learned a lot that goes far beyond the topic of pitching VCs. I bolded my favorite parts in the transcript below.]

SlideShare: [...]

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I just replied to a startup that applied to AngelList with a website behind a closed beta wall:

“Thanks Jeff. Where’s the demo? If your team isn’t pedigreed (founded a company and made money for its investors) and you don’t have outstanding traction, the #1 thing you have going for you is a demo. I also [...]

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High concept pitches are great for getting your foot in the door (“It’s Friendster… for dogs!”).
But once you’re in the building, pitch a bigger vision. I’ve been talking to a lot of startups that apply to AngelList and most of them don’t have a vision that would separate investors from their money. Here are some [...]

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Ho Nam (@honam):
“The blockbusters are oftentimes the ‘ugly ducklings.’ Cisco is probably the best example in the VC world. Everyone passed except for Sequoia. In the book world, almost everyone passed on JK Rowling.
“It’s just hard to predict the future looking into the rear-view mirror, yet everyone wants to pile onto the brand names [VCs] [...]

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Simeon Simeonov:
“You have to understand that you are not competing with an abstract notion of what a good investment is. You are competing with the other teams that saw the investor that week.”
This is why investors often don’t have good reasons why they’re passing. Maybe your company is good, but the competition is simply better. [...]

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Thanks to FastIgnite, a startup advisory firm, for sponsoring Venture Hacks this month. This post is by Simeon Simeonov, the firm’s founder and CEO (and formerly a partner at Polaris Ventures). If you like it, check out Sim’s blog and tweets @simeons. – Nivi
“Prediction is very difficult, especially if it’s about the future.”
Niels Bohr, [...]

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“Your first stop if raising money!”
– Adam Smith, Founder of Xobni
The rumors are true. You can buy Pitching Hacks in paperback, for $19. And you can still buy the good old-fashioned PDF for $9. Get them here.
So far, we’ve sold about 700 copies of Pitching Hacks and gotten great reviews. But we want to sell [...]

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