A VC in Vacationland

Whenever I'd have a 'brilliant idea', I'd ask my Mom if it made sense. If I had to go on for over a few minutes, I knew that the idea needed more work to make it easily explainable. Now that Mom is passed, my CFO (and wife of 47 years) has taken the place of Mom. She is just as tough to convince as Mom, but now it's real money being invested every day, so she has become my go-to sensible investment guru.

She gets to listen to one-half of my phone calls with entrepreneurs pitching their start up(I use my great LG wireless headset) since we share an office. After a call, I ask what what she thought of 'my side of the call'. She says she can tell a lot about investment sensibility by the kinds of questions I am asking. 

So here's Lindy's hints for entrepreneurs pitching a VC:

1. Be interested in the VC–don't start the pitch immediately if you don't know Dave. He'd like to tell you something about himself and learn about you before we look at your business idea. It irritates him when he has to stop an entrepreneur and 'go back to the beginning'.

2. Don't go all-technical–Even though I asked where you host your software, I'm not really interested in the deep tech details of the host. We can get to that and all the other technical details during due diligence.

3.Don't go through the 50 page slide deck unless Dave asks–Dave's read the pitch. He has a lot of questions. Answer the questions. Get on with the demo, if appropriate.

4. Don't try and explain the industry– Dave spends a lot of time during a week keeping up with the tech industry. Skip the 5 slides saying its a billion dollar market and get to YOUR share of that market and why you can capture it pretty quick.

5. Keep to the allotted time–Dave has a lot of back-to-back calls. He's given you an hour or two. Stick to the agenda and leave plenty of time for questions. Ask Dave up front how he would like to manage the call.

Hopefully, these ideas will help you prepare for any VC meeting as we all are frustrated by the same things during entrepreneur pitches.