I talked to entrepreneurs who were much more strategic
Posted: Sun Dec 22, 2024 9:28 am
And exacting about their introductions process (and plenty who followed a similar pattern to what I did). In hindsight, it wasn't perfect, but I did get to meet a tremendous number of very impressive investors and get their feedback. The Meeting Process During our fundraising experience, we connected with a lot of VCs. I've taken a screenshot of the the firms we talked to below (from my Google spreadsheet file on the subject), though I won't go into more detail about who from each firm we talked to or how far along we progressed with each of them.
I think there's an expectation of privacy mo russia email list st VCs have, and I want to respect that. BTW - I'm not listing every single firm we talked to, but this is a more-than-representative sample and hopefully fulfills our core value of transparency. List of VCs Initially, we were very excited and I'll try to explain why. When starting out, our expectations (thanks to both advice from other entrepreneurs and via blog posts/articles the web) were that 10-20% of phone calls would lead to first meetings , a few of these might turn into partner meetings and we'd hopefully get a term sheet or two at the end.
Instead, the funnel looked like this: VC Conversion Path As you can see, we had phone calls with 40 firms, and had a surprisingly high conversion rate to first meetings, which had us initially enthusiastic. VCs are notoriously busy, and scheduling time with them is often a massive challenge. To have such a high percentage of firms interested in such a dour climate made us believe we could buck the trend. Unfortunately, it also meant lots of time we needed to invest in preparing for, and in most cases, flying out of Seattle for in-person meetings.
I think there's an expectation of privacy mo russia email list st VCs have, and I want to respect that. BTW - I'm not listing every single firm we talked to, but this is a more-than-representative sample and hopefully fulfills our core value of transparency. List of VCs Initially, we were very excited and I'll try to explain why. When starting out, our expectations (thanks to both advice from other entrepreneurs and via blog posts/articles the web) were that 10-20% of phone calls would lead to first meetings , a few of these might turn into partner meetings and we'd hopefully get a term sheet or two at the end.
Instead, the funnel looked like this: VC Conversion Path As you can see, we had phone calls with 40 firms, and had a surprisingly high conversion rate to first meetings, which had us initially enthusiastic. VCs are notoriously busy, and scheduling time with them is often a massive challenge. To have such a high percentage of firms interested in such a dour climate made us believe we could buck the trend. Unfortunately, it also meant lots of time we needed to invest in preparing for, and in most cases, flying out of Seattle for in-person meetings.