(This article is focused on raising money for startups with an African focus but it contains some great generic advice on for all startups on needed steps before spending considerable time in fundraising.) 1. Make sure you are ready – Checklist This first step is actually common everywhere, entrepreneurs think they deserve financing when its ...
Investor Presentation Guidelines (The 7P’s you can do it on a napkin!) Southwest Airlines business plan was conceived on a cocktail napkin. Compaq Computers ‘portable’ design was originally sketched on a restaurant napkin. An investor presentation can equally be simplified by following some guidelines that offer thoroughness with simplicity. The following presentation offers some guidelines ...
The initial section covers what to do before you approach a VC (or if you should even raise VC at all), the middle section is what the presentation you send should look like and the final session covers what to do after the meeting. If there a post description but no link it means I ...
Not all VC firms are the same. Fund size, fund tenure (how far into the current fund is the firm?), firm’s track record, partner’s areas of interest and the firm’s areas of focus all affect the types of deals a fund wants to do and their expectations for returns. It is essential to understand this ...
This is a talk on pitching startups to Investors given to students in Stanford’s business plan competition. Lots of good advice. The talk was recorded with an iPhone and sync’ed with the slides. It contains alot of material from the book, Pitching Hacks.
All venture capitalists have probably experienced a bad pitch from an entrepreneur. But a couple years ago, the team at Canaan Partners heard a real sleeper. No, we mean, a real sleeper. The chief executive and vice president of sales for a start-up company visited Canaan’s Menlo Park, Calif., office. Just as the CEO was ...
You need tons of money. You have no financial contacts. Where can you turn? Many entrepreneurs have found what they need in venture forums. Any entrepreneur who’s ever chased venture capital dollars can tell you the process is often a brutal, soul-stripping experience. For those without Ivy League connections or friends and family in the ...
At the Techcrunch 50 event, they had a panel of VC’s answering 20 questions on a wide variety of subjects. You can read the full text here or watch the video but i think the following exchanges go a long way towards understanding how VC’s think when it comes to evaluating entrepreneurs and pitches: