This is going to be BIG.

MAY 11, 2015

I realized that I judge a lot of hackathons, pitch competitions and other various things on the weekends, and felt like I was losing at least 2 out of my 8 weekend days--so I gave myself back those days. Out of those, I take about 150 new pitches a year--about 3 a week. There are weird parts, like board meetings being an hour a day.

VC 419

VC pitching board construction 419

This is going to be BIG.

JULY 8, 2013

Since there''s no way to both make yourself accessible and not get a fire hose of inbound, most of the pitches you''re going to have are from perfectly nice, smart people who have perfectly horrific, unworkable ideas. 2) People pitch you. Even the best and most active board members can still feel pretty helpless.

venture capital 419

venture capital VC advice capital 419

This is going to be BIG.

MARCH 24, 2014

Not every VC used to get pitched by VC funds for a living and has seen hundreds and hundreds of VC pitch decks. In particular, I''m always trying to improve as a board member, but their aren''t any programs or classes for that. How are we supposed to get better?

accelerator 371

accelerator mentorship VC incubation 371

Entrepreneurs' Organization

MAY 28, 2020

Embody it to your core and make it a central part of your pitch to investors. The post 3 Tips for Getting Investors on Board With Your CSR Mission appeared first on Octane Blog – The official blog of the Entrepreneurs' Organization. Purpose and profits have never been more intertwined, and investors have taken notice.

board 226

board sustainability strategy energy 226

This is going to be BIG.

MAY 5, 2023

To put that timeframe in perspective, here’s a picture of analyst me taken at USV’s first office in 2005, dressed in khakis and a button-down shirt versus a picture of me, a GP at my own firm, over 100 deals later, now on my latest Zoom board call from my couch at home with my junior analyst of about a year and a half. No new investments.

ventures 545

ventures investment investing VC 545

This is going to be BIG.

JANUARY 22, 2014

These are things that other VCs think about, but founders who come to pitch don''t think about too much. One of the reasons why I''m announcing at all is because I realized that it had been a while since I said anything about the progress of the fund--and if you''re an industry person, you might have started wondering. How where things going?

pitching 413

pitching board VC opportunity 413

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 21, 2014

Every consultant was pitching a process for reinventing your organization through BI. Make sure your board challenges you enough about long-term vision & innovation. Run board meetings that force strategic discussions rather than cheering sessions focused on financial metrics. Surely there must be some benefit here??

incubation 354

incubation board VC innovation 354

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 8, 2014

Associates often shadow partners at board meetings so that they can help follow up with the company on important initiatives between board meetings. I think it’s great for some people because it really does give you some solid benefits: board exposure / experience. Helping be the VC “presence” at key events.

investment 365

investment investing VC board 365

This is going to be BIG.

NOVEMBER 28, 2021

She’s even been on several board calls already and last week showed up on her first pitch call. Or, just do the six months acroess the board—it doesn’t seem to be hurting Spotify. Home is a different story. How about paying into childcare costs, adoption, or IVF too?

hospitality 478

hospitality board energy pitching 478

Dream It

FEBRUARY 5, 2021

Keep reading for some more of the most common mistakes startups make when pitching and for Steve’s tips on how to fix them. Investors want to hear, “Our unique insight is __”… in your pitch 2. End your pitch with something along the lines of, “So, is this something you feel you would like to get behind?” co-founder).

startup founder 397

startup founder founder startup pitching 397

This is going to be BIG.

MAY 2, 2023

The venture asset class seems to have already decided that AI is the next great investment opportunity, but I’m not so sure it’s going to disrupt business and create the across-the-board wealth that has been predicted. I got to see all of the top VCs pitching their funds. Technology has already made the world pretty efficient.

opportunity 254

opportunity investment investing disruption 254

This is going to be BIG.

MARCH 1, 2013

Secondly, it was easier for the entrepreneurs to pitch in front of a roomful of a lot of money than one at a time. In the public stock market, activist investors rally institutionals to affect change in the investing landscape--keeping boards in check. Are they members of the same food co-op or school board? What does that mean?

pitching 338

pitching entrepreneurs board networking 338

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 27, 2013

When DataSift sets up a board meeting (next one in London, last was in NYC) we have investors from NYC (IA Ventures), SF (Scale Ventures) and the founding team + chairman in London. If these people work for reputable firms and have the right industry knowledge they ought to be on your pitch list. This isn’t a complaint.

VC 365

VC board communities pitching 365

TechCrunch

APRIL 25, 2023

But dealmaking is idiosyncratic: a few investors might be content to make a deal over coffee, but early-stage teams still need a sturdy pitch deck or memo they can leave behind. I’m going to save you some time: many (if not most) of you are not yet ready to pitch an investor. Thanks very much to everyone who took the time to respond!

pitching 98

pitching incubation board opportunity 98

Entrepreneurs' Organization

AUGUST 5, 2022

There’s a lengthy application and vetting process for EO members or Accelerators to qualify to pitch. The 20 or so people selected will participate in a pitch workshop breakout session during DX22. Round One of the Angel-Shark Experience gives each competitor three minutes to pitch before a big gong ends their presentation.

accelerator 273

accelerator networking pitching real estate 273

This is going to be BIG.

NOVEMBER 16, 2023

Luckily for aspirational baseball players, pitch velocity, spin rate, and just about every other aspect of playing baseball are highly quantifiable in real-time. You throw a pitch and you don’t find out the speed for a year or even longer. That pitch you threw a year ago, that was 92. Actually, it’s even worse than that.

pitching 243

pitching peer-to-peer board VC 243

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 20, 2012

Board Meetings. How do VCs break out of group think when they are shuttling from one board meeting to the next, from one conference to the other and talking with all the same people? Every so often I find myself caught up in a really hectic 3-4 week schedule where it seems like I float endlessly betweens meetings. Conferences.

creativity 400

creativity venture capital entrepreneurs board 400

StartupNation

NOVEMBER 21, 2021

In the startup world, it’s pitch decks, not business plans that get companies funded. Making a pitch deck is an art, a science, but most importantly, a story. Angel investors and venture capitalists have also learned to expect a standard pitch deck as the first filter when evaluating a company to invest in.

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pitching SaaS mix-use media 110

American Entrepreneurship

DECEMBER 4, 2024

Recognizing this, The Veteran Fund announced the winner of its $100,000 Veteran Pitch Competition and the recent closing of its inaugural oversubscribed investment Fund I. Sutton, an entrepreneur, is a Board Member of YPO, a global leadership community of extraordinary chief executives, and the Nevada Policy Research Institute.

leadership 98

leadership startup accelerator mentorship entrepreneurship 98

This is going to be BIG.

FEBRUARY 27, 2022

Besides, there were a limited number of places where I could do my job in venture capital anyway—and while I might be a go to for a pitch from super early stage pre-seed and seed founders looking for quick answers and decisive term sheets in New York City, the reality is that I would be pretty far down the list in the Valley.

culture 360

culture VC communities education 360

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 30, 2014

I am VERY careful in board meetings and in startup pitches to tell entrepreneurs, “I feel very strongly about my opinion on this topic. In the End Go with Your Gut. In the end there is no recipe for a startup or for business. I caution people all the time from overly following my advice.

advice 407

advice frameworks startup mix-use 407

This is going to be BIG.

FEBRUARY 18, 2019

If everyone gets measured based on one set of shared norms around pitching, professional reviews, and updates—the language of straight white men—you’re going to wind up with a lot of mismeasurement of what’s actually happening and likely to happen in these companies.

venture capital 413

venture capital capital ventures peer-to-peer 413

Entrepreneurs' Organization

MAY 24, 2024

In her 20-year leadership tenure with the organization, Winnie has held volunteer positions ranging from Communications Chair to Global Board Director, and has been instrumental in EO’s progress. She currently serves as EO’s Senior Global Board Advisor for Leadership Communications and Brand.

leadership 197

leadership board sustainability entrepreneurs 197

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 17, 2019

I don’t feel like canceling LinkedIn just because occasionally a well-meaning but slightly not-clued-in person from a faraway place wants me to be their personal mentor, answer 3-questions for their high-school entrepreneurship project or take a sales pitch for their recruiting services. In Adam’s world, I’m rude. Scheduling a group call?—?as

advice 250

advice board pitching startup accelerator 250

This is going to be BIG.

AUGUST 25, 2023

I would control all the board seats and voting power, but you’ve got this fancy title you can put on your LinkedIn and use when you speak at conferences later after we IPO. It’s a perfectly legitimate pitch to say, “This would be my team the day we close on the money, but they have day jobs because costs.” Technically, it’s a title.

founder 367

founder VC board pitching 367

Revolution

FEBRUARY 15, 2024

What we did: David Hall, who serves on the board of the National Venture Capital Association, celebrated the organization’s 50th anniversary by joining fellow board members at the New York Stock Exchange to ring the Closing Bell. Catch insights from Steve and a recap of the pitch competition. Where we went: New York, New York?

venture capital 246

venture capital pitching board ventures 246

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 3, 2015

They originally pitched us with a hacked but super productive prototype they built in their fraternity room and a rendering of a beautiful bookshelf sized in-home growing system that they committed to building. One of the first bets we made in Agtech was Grove started by two young, passionate engineers out of MIT – Gabe and Jamie.

founder 363

founder ecology sustainability culture 363

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 1, 2014

Every pitch I’ve ever seen has led to the, “Would Amazon eventually do this? It’s the company that evokes fear into more startups and venture capitalists looking to fund eCommerce businesses than any other potential competitor. And could we then compete?” ” type questions.

real estate 380

real estate ventures innovation pitching 380

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 5, 2014

But as I rose in my career (and post MBA) I moved into a role in which I was to advise board-level executives on topics where I was expected to rapidly become an expert. We are their sparring partners, their sounding boards. Some areas were easy because they were technical and the answer was knowable or estimate-able. It is unknowable.

peer-to-peer 337

peer-to-peer entrepreneurs consulting VC 337

This is going to be BIG.

SEPTEMBER 15, 2017

That meaning isn't going to be something you search for on a traditional job board branded around impact--it's going to be an inherent part of the way you search. I met Rachel Renock a few months ago at a SheWorx pitch event. It reminded me of when I first heard the pitch for Kickstarter and then witnessed what it would become.

pitching 204

pitching creativity board financing 204

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 7, 2015

Another founder … “When I pitched the idea to Adam, he was super on board,” Mr. Sloyan said. I see emails from angel syndicates all the time for companies I hadn’t even given 2 seconds thought about investing and I get full info, pitch deck and info about the round size and timing. All of my partners at Upfront do.

startup 323

startup advice pitching VC 323

TechCrunch

AUGUST 20, 2021

In the latter half of the episode, those same guests give live feedback to folks in the audience who come on our virtual stage and pitch their products. Truth be told, everyone loves a good pitch-off. So in these upcoming Startup Alley Edition episodes of Extra Crunch Live, we’re turning the entire episode into a pitch-off.

pitching 101

pitching disruption startup board 101

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 23, 2017

Because I’ve observed this process dozens and dozens of times both as somebody who has had to raise capital for nearly 20 years himself and as an investor on the board of companies where we’re raising money — I thought I’d jot down some thoughts for those who will raise in the years ahead. So GET BACK IN FRONT OF THEM! That’s fantasy land.

pitching 238

pitching VC mix-use entrepreneurs 238

TechCrunch

FEBRUARY 14, 2023

A startup lives or dies by its board of directors. Chen joined Tonkean’s board of directors in 2019. The two are set to discuss the best ways for founders to work with their board of directors, including handling disagreements, preparing for fundraising events and hiring (or firing) senior management. PST / 2:30 p.m.

board 89

board pitching networking capital 89

Young Leaders of the Americas Initiative

JULY 27, 2021

I’m taking people on board and asking them, what is your vision for small businesses? I used to pitch ideas to my cousins and my parents of ways I was going to make money. As I went on pitching the idea to other groups, I realized that so many companies, not just small ones, were having these problems. What keeps you motivated?

pitching 219

pitching communities entrepreneurship networking 219

This is going to be BIG.

MAY 4, 2022

What’s that investor going to be like in a board meeting when you as a female founder need their support or worse, actually their vote? Do you think whatever misogyny is driving their paternalistic approach to women’s health is going to somehow morph into a vote of confidence for you in the face of criticism from other board members?

finance 417

finance financing board VC 417

This is going to be BIG.

OCTOBER 31, 2013

Pitching is all about telling a story. You''ve been to demo days and pitch meetups and read Techcrunch and Mashable about product launches. What the hell are you pitching? If we raise, the head of marketing from the Ab Rollee has agreed to come on board.". You''ve practiced long and hard on how you tell your story.

pitching 291

pitching venture capital energy technology 291