Entrepreneurs' Organization

AUGUST 5, 2022

The first two MyEO DealExchange conferences in 2018 and 2019 made a significant impact on the members who attended—including a 7-figure investment in Scott Mesh (EO New York)’s company. Each person gets 90 seconds to share the details of the investment opportunity or the “deal need” they’re presenting or seeking.

accelerator 273

accelerator networking pitching real estate 273

Gust

DECEMBER 27, 2012

It sounds obvious, but the majority of entrepreneurs who pitch me have obviously never thought through many of the major issues surrounding their companies. Understand what investors are looking for , what they usually invest in, and why. Understand your business.

investing 164

investing investment pitching mix-use 164

This is going to be BIG.

AUGUST 25, 2023

A recurring theme in a lot of my BSList posts is that, if an investor thinks they can make a boatload of money with you, they’ll go to all sorts of lengths to invest. That includes investing way earlier than they would normally, investing outside of scope, investing with their personal capital outside of the fund, etc.

founder 367

founder VC board pitching 367

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 17, 2010

Anyone who works in the venture business or frankly just lives in Silicon Valley will be used to hearing a buzz word rise up out of nowhere to capture the technology zeitgeist and find its way into every entrepreneur’s product development plan or every aspiring entrepreneur’s pitch deck. And I feel the same about investing.

pitching 296

pitching innovation social gaming advice 296

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 22, 2011

By definition each of those VCs (unless they are a micro VC – and one who doesn’t mind 5% ownership) will view you as a sort of “option&# where they might get to fund the next round if you do well. So why else would they invest if not as an option to re-up in the next round? But it happens.

VC 314

VC advice pitching investing 314

This is going to be BIG.

SEPTEMBER 30, 2012

The other entrepreneur quoted in the story is from a guy pitching a Pinterest clone. We're seeing, for the first time, investment and some disruption in huge areas like education, food, healthcare, government and even hardware based startups. Needless to say, he's having some trouble raising. The tablet market has absolutely exploded.

ventures 299

ventures venture capital disruption pitching 299

Gust

OCTOBER 11, 2012

While you will definitely need to be a corporate entity before you can accept funding from any investor (or issue stock options to any employees), the specific corporate status of the venture at this stage is much less important to investors than its functional status.

pitching 122

pitching investing investment founder 122

This is going to be BIG.

MAY 25, 2011

bre.ad , a new startup launching whose founder has perfected the art of the conference pitch. No pitch, nothing more. You see, we hear a lot about elevator pitches, but to be honest, most short pitches really don't do your company justice. Can you really pitch a company in one sentence? No, not bread.

pitching 284

pitching disruption entrepreneurs enablement 284

This is going to be BIG.

APRIL 27, 2010

Not only that, there’s a hugely disproportionate amount of time spent on pitching for money for these paper ideas. Step #2: Pitch investors. When Marc Cenedella first started TheLadders, he build the first version himself after investing $350 in MySQL and PHP books to teach himself to code. break the silos!

education 304

education innovation entrepreneurship peer-to-peer 304

This is going to be BIG.

AUGUST 29, 2016

You shouldn't, because it's still your fault they didn't invest. Assuming they weren't unethical and they met your character standard, you went into a pitch with the goal of getting money from this person, and they didn't get there. Getting an investment is very difficult thing. Same with pitching. How difficult?

founder 219

founder pitching board investing 219

Onevest

APRIL 30, 2015

By definition Angel Investors are individual investors. But the data shows a rapidly growing trend in accredited investors investing together. This is in contrast to going it alone in direct investments or publicly traded REITs and stocks. Groups investing in multiple deals mean better diversification. By Tim Hoghten.

investing 116

investing investment coworking spaces startup 116

This is going to be BIG.

OCTOBER 22, 2017

Remember that we're lucky to be investing in your company, because ideas as good as yours don't come around too often, and that will change your approach as you try to gather your first check. We can debate whether they're sociopaths, but we definitely shouldn't assume that every "great investor" is "great" at being human.

VC 333

VC advice pitching opportunity 333

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 5, 2011

If you invested in the first angel round of a startup company it is usually very hard to sell your stock – usually for many years if ever at all. The earlier you invest the higher the chances the company won’t work out and thus you pay a lower price than later-stage investors. Private markets for stocks are the opposite.

startup 336

startup advice pitching investing 336

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 1, 2012

Well, I get nothing out of seeing how well a bunch of people can pitch their businesses on stage. I don’t try to optimize for who might be a great investment opportunity or somebody that I really “should know.” Leadership, Teams, Success & Happiness (Tiger Moms & the true definition of success).

pitching 319

pitching culture entrepreneurs mentorship 319

Smart Hustle Magazine

APRIL 6, 2021

All of this enters my mind as I prepare to give “The Art of the “Killer” Pitch” to my Canadian audience. To my shock and awe, I had over 200 attendees come to my session from hearing one of my pitches that I gave before the Keynote Speaker. If I could rise above all that tried to hold me back, pitching is the way forward.

pitching 109

pitching energy entrepreneurs media 109

This is going to be BIG.

MARCH 25, 2013

It's even more relevant now that I've started the first venture capital fund in Brooklyn-- Brooklyn Bridge Ventures --and invested in four Brooklyn based companies. The definitive article about 33 Flatbush--the kind of commercial building you would drive by a million times without thinking twice-- was written in the NY Times a few years ago.

communities 294

communities innovation creativity real estate 294

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 28, 2010

That’s the classic definition of Grin Fucking. Privately you all acknowledge that nobody believes in it yet we’re letting our leadership continue to invest our money and reputation on something we know is going to fail because it has no real basis. Unsurprisingly, this one way best. The title IS the post.

frameworks 378

frameworks consulting advice strategy 378

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 21, 2016

We led a $4 million investment along with Thrive Capital, GLG and Sound Ventures. I know that “mission driven” sounds nebulous or some convenient definition of anything we want to fund. Truly, in many ways, my concern was the inverse of normal business pitches. But really it’s something I look for.

incumbents 270

incumbents entrepreneurs education pitching 270

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 17, 2009

I think they definitely qualify as a VC and not a seed fund. But they do small, seed like investments when they like the entrepreneurs. His argument is that when you find a new VC to invest there will be some kind of collusion between the A round investor and the inside seed investor. I could definitely see that happening.

VC 283

VC real estate advice venture capital 283

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 6, 2010

But in my experience as an entrepreneur and now spending my time amongst investors I can generalize that almost all VC investments in early stage technology & Internet investments come down to just four key factors. Everyone has their own definition of momentum (user numbers, revenue, channel partners, biz dev deals, whatever).

startup 360

startup VC advice entrepreneurs 360

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 11, 2011

In the video I describe how to best play this meeting and why, without a champion going into the meeting, you’re unlikely to get an investment. The best ones are visual, high-level, have a narrative, move swiftly, are designed to prompt questions as much as “pitch&# your company and importantly have a narrative.

VC 340

VC venture capital leadership pitching 340

This is going to be BIG.

AUGUST 8, 2011

He hasn't founded or built either a successful, let alone innovative company, and he hasn't raised $ to invest in those entrepreneurs. You would see mostly unrealized investments, some of which had raised successful follow on rounds, but mostly too early to tell. These are things I systematically break down when I look at investments.

VC 275

VC peer-to-peer board advice 275

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. You two should meet.”

advice 250

advice board pitching startup accelerator 250

TechCrunch

SEPTEMBER 1, 2022

The crew here at TechCrunch has done a lot of writing about making amazing pitch decks over the years, and I figured it was time that I put together a collection of all of it in one handy spot. Perhaps I’m just a teensy bit biased over here, but I’d say it’s definitely worth subscribing to get access to all of this content.

pitching 102

pitching startup venture capital ventures 102

This is going to be BIG.

SEPTEMBER 25, 2018

It turned out I wasn’t such a great product manager, the technical things we were doing were about two years too early—about to be made orders of magnitude easier by a lot of cloud and big data tools, and, oh, yeah, Lehman went under when I was pitching VCs for money in 2008. Personal finance is a thing that no one likes to talk about.

finance 274

finance financing pitching founder 274

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 25, 2010

Quite honestly I see way too many company pitches that are designed for Techies but I only want to invest in products designed for Normals. Start by defining the problem you’re solving – I see way too many early-stage entrepreneurs who start their companies with a product definition rather than a market problem.

advice 348

advice entrepreneurs sustainability pitching 348

This is going to be BIG.

APRIL 29, 2011

I had an interesting conversation with an entrepreneur last week about how he decided which VCs he was going to pitch. Bad intros usually include some service provider, like some high net worth management guy looking to get me to invest with him. And these represent some of our most successful investments. Why did I need that?

VC 291

VC pitching entrepreneurs networking 291

This is going to be BIG.

MARCH 3, 2019

They’re not only leading larger rounds, but may need to bridge companies they’ve otherwise made large investments into that have higher burn rates. The incentive to want a larger fund is real—more staff, better office, better salaries—but the investment strategy really doesn’t make much sense if you ask me. How much do they hold back?

mix-use 276

mix-use pitching investing investment 276

Gust

MAY 22, 2012

This is a good time to reflect on my experience with locally based angel investment. I just finished with the fourth of our annual angel investment event for my local group based in Eugene and Corvallis, Oregon. We try to make our investments as convertible debt. So is that a good way to invest money, you might ask?

angel investing 111

angel investing investing investment pitching 111

TechCrunch

NOVEMBER 16, 2022

David Smith is VP of data and analytics at TheVentureCity , a global early-stage venture fund investing in product-centric startups across the U.S., Of every 100 deals a VC firm considers, about a quarter get a meeting, and only one ends up securing investment. Europe, and Latin America.

pitching 87

pitching SaaS sustainability VC 87

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 3, 2010

The problem with VC Seed Funding – Chris is right to raise the issue with entrepreneurs because there have been instances where large VC funds have set up seed programs where the investments have been used as “options.&# There are many problems with this. invested in the seed round they have more inside knowledge than I do.

VC 265

VC venture capital entrepreneurs investing 265

TechCrunch

OCTOBER 14, 2020

million richer following the close of its series A funding led by the Los Angeles-based investment firm Mucker Capital and including previous investors Urban.us, Knoll Ventures and Atlanta’s own TechSquare Labs. Now the company is $5.7 “There’s a lot of product databases, but no one can analyze it,” said Chopson.

sustainability 101

sustainability pitching construction energy 101

This is going to be BIG.

OCTOBER 12, 2020

When I started leading deals at First Round Capital, I sourced investments in 8 companies. We started talking about cycling and electronic shifters (which I definitely couldn’t afford) when he mentioned this new company. My first set of important meetings was with an endowment that had invested in my second fund.

VC 364

VC hospitality investing investment 364

Dream It

APRIL 12, 2020

Martino founded Bullpen in 2010 with a focus on post-seed, pre-Series A startups, and he led the fund’s investments in companies like FanDuel, Namely, Ipsy, SpotHero, Classy, and Airmap. This geographic distinction is now less about actual geography and more about mentality and style of investing of these types of firms.

ventures 334

ventures startup capital board 334

This is going to be BIG.

JANUARY 3, 2021

For example, for me, I didn’t just put in “e-mail time”, I divided up the amount of time I spend responding to entrepreneur pitches in e-mail vs other types of e-mail, which I labeled “correspondence”. I wanted to keep an eye on the overall work hour tally because I definitely have a tendency to bite off more than I can chew.

pitching 300

pitching board media consulting 300

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 31, 2012

Many MBA programs still cater too much to the needs of large, corporate management jobs or prepare students to enter big consulting companies or investments banks. Her post is short & well written so definitely worth a read if you’re a startup person and want to hear some sensible views on sales.

startup 319

startup consulting pitching support 319

This is going to be BIG.

DECEMBER 3, 2019

I’ve made a bet that if a founder pitches me, whether or not I fund them, if I make the process worthwhile by telling them exactly why I couldn’t get there, they’re likely to recommend that other founders do the same. If there’s any one thing I’ve focused on in my VC career, it’s trying to give real, actionable feedback to founders.

pitching 158

pitching communities VC founder 158