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. E-mail is networking, deal work, due diligence. Out of those, I take about 150 new pitches a year--about 3 a week.

VC 419

VC pitching board construction 419

This is going to be BIG.

FEBRUARY 21, 2021

She was pitching for a pre-seed round of $400k. Founders hit the street with their pitch deck, some make it, and some don’t, but nearly all of them ascribe a lot more human influence over the process than there probably is. I’m a female founder. I don’t have a technical co-founder. I don’t have enough traction.

advice 450

advice pitching venture capital VC 450

This is going to be BIG.

AUGUST 8, 2011

How about as a VC? Fred has basically always been a VC, Mike was a reporter, and Jim worked in product marketing and management consulting. Surely--but then I realize how difficult it is to be an early stage VC in NYC. 3) Network, network, network. Charlie is a nice guy, but his company failed.".

VC 275

VC peer-to-peer board advice 275

This is going to be BIG.

MAY 5, 2023

No more founder pitch meetings. I’ll also continue to work within the NYC tech community—now thriving at a level I could hardly have imagined when I first got the pitch deck for USV’s first fund as a Limited Partner at the GM pension fund. No new investments. No more responding to fundraising decks.

ventures 545

ventures investing investment VC 545

This is going to be BIG.

MARCH 24, 2014

Not every potentially good VC previously worked for Fred Wilson and Josh Kopelman. Not every VC used to get pitched by VC funds for a living and has seen hundreds and hundreds of VC pitch decks. Their guidance and network can also make these companies better. But what about investors?

accelerator 371

accelerator mentorship VC incubation 371

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 4, 2013

As a VC you want to feel like you have “proprietary sources” of deal flow. I think the issue I have always had with investment bank pitches was best summed up in this article about Y Combinator in which Paul Graham apparently made the following quotes. They know how to build pitch decks. International money.

VC 347

VC advice pitching entrepreneurs 347

This is going to be BIG.

FEBRUARY 21, 2019

While most of the money that goes into VC funds comes from institutions that are highly experienced in the asset class, some family offices and high net worth individuals also invest in VC. They’re trying to get exposure and diversification at the same time, while potentially seeing co-investment deal flow.

VC 267

VC investing investment strategy 267

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. Then I realized that it's probably not obvious what the dynamics are around how VCs tend to get introduced to companies and what works best for people, so I figured I'd blog about it. The Cold Intro. If I don't.

VC 292

VC pitching entrepreneurs networking 292

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 18, 2014

It got me thinking about the advice that I often give to new VCs. For years I saw myself as the new guy in VC but then you wake up one day and realize that 50% of your peers have been doing it for less time than you and time has moved on. I don’t want any formal pitches. VC Industry' It’s exhausting.

peer-to-peer 317

peer-to-peer pitching VC accelerator 317

TechCrunch

MARCH 3, 2021

She graduated with high honors from Harvard, is a member of the World Economic Forum and is a Fellow of the Aspen Global Leadership Network. Weeks or even months of working on your pitch deck could come down to the 170 seconds (on average) that investors spend looking at it. You have just 170 seconds. exit strategy”. just X percent”.

pitching 113

pitching VC strategy leadership 113

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 8, 2014

What is a principal at a VC firm and how does it work at Upfront Ventures? ” Associates have different functions at different VCs. VC firm admin. VC firm policy or fund analysis. Helping be the VC “presence” at key events. inside insight into VC decision-making. Industry reviews.

investing 365

investing investment VC board 365

This is going to be BIG.

MAY 16, 2024

Then, they need to figure out a way to project that brand up above the venture community, like a Bat signal calling for the best founders to come and pitch them. This is something I talk about a lot with my VC coaching clients. It could mean focusing on combating lonliness, which could be a proptech focus and a social networking play.

VC 243

VC angel investing networking pitching 243

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 3, 2011

But last week I noticed a blog post by a woman, Tara Tiger Brown, that asked the question, “ Why Aren’t More Women Commenting on VC Blog Posts? She has a quote from literally every major VC from whom you’d want to hear. My guess is that probably only 2-3 out of every hundred pitches I receive are from women.

entrepreneurs 341

entrepreneurs entrepreneurship VC pitching 341

This is going to be BIG.

NOVEMBER 1, 2016

I can't think of a single time when a white man came to pitch me and I told him his fundraising plans weren't aggressive enough. Yet, for some reason, the goals for her pitch were incremental--despite being in an extremely hot space. VCs don't go later and angels don't go earlier. Everyone says they fund people in their network.

advice 419

advice founder pitching VC 419

This is going to be BIG.

AUGUST 16, 2020

One of the core beliefs that I had when I started Brooklyn Bridge Ventures was that most of the next 50-100 important companies to be built in New York City were going to be started by people not on most VC’s radars today. The Circulate series acknowledges that access to ideas, resources and networks is structurally unequal.

communities 167

communities networking founder disruption 167

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 16, 2013

He used the 500Startups platform to uber network in the Bay Area where he was living. Of course he pitched me the entire ride down. But … we had committed to setting up an EIR program where we would fund people to work on their ideas in our offices and also get the dual experience of working inside a VC.

pitching 372

pitching advice VC entrepreneurs 372

This is going to be BIG.

SEPTEMBER 19, 2012

Back when I was pitching my previous startup to investors, it had never really dawned on me that they had experienced what I was going through--and that a VC firm was essentially a startup. VCs pitch for money, too. No one ever thinks about VCs having to pitch, who they pitch to, or how it works.

ventures 280

ventures pitching VC startup ecosystem 280

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 21, 2011

Will you get the TechCrunch bump, the tier-1 VC anointment, followed by great PR firm support and then the NY Times or WSJ story that follows? They got us to fill out the details of where we worked in the past and the network effect compels us to keep it updated. Not every problem has to be a huge VC-fundable business.

transportation 309

transportation VC networking energy 309

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 27, 2012

My friend and fellow SoCal venture capitalist Peter Lee wrote a post about the different roles within a VC and spent much time on the role of an associate. These are the permanent members of a VC. The process for raising money from a VC is a sales process and as such much of what is taught in enterprise sales can be applied.

VC 308

VC pitching entrepreneurs advice 308

This is going to be BIG.

FEBRUARY 27, 2024

You’ll pitch a new client by e-mail or you’ll ask people you’ve worked with to recommend you. One of my VC coaching clients is looking for a position with a new firm. Who she could convince to sit down with her would say something about her network and access. It would remind your own network that you exist.

networking 418

networking leadership creativity pitching 418

This is going to be BIG.

FEBRUARY 18, 2019

Brooklyn Bridge Ventures , the pre-seed and seed stage VC fund I run in NYC, has invested in 64 companies in the last six and a half years. When you can introduce diverse founders to a diverse network of professionals, it makes their professional experience orders of magnitude better. Fifteen had co-founders over 40.

venture capital 413

venture capital capital ventures peer-to-peer 413

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 18, 2011

I hope you’ll excuse me when I do the latter in combination with the former to try and explain how I see macro trends and help you think about the mind of a VC. Despite working for one of the top 2 talent agencies in LA, despite having had VC experience, Dustin chose another route. He wanted to be an entrepreneur.

investing 303

investing investment VC media 303

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 23, 2017

The perverse nature of raising capital is that “no’s” almost always precede “yeses” because it’s very easy for a VC to tell you that you’re not a good fit without doing any real work to evaluate your company so you hear “no” far before others start doing more work. It sounds like a lot to know — and it is. So GET BACK IN FRONT OF THEM!

pitching 238

pitching VC mix-use entrepreneurs 238

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 14, 2014

Throughout all of these years I was a full-time VC so Launchpad really came out of evenings and weekends for me. Adam had a full time startup and then was doing consulting (he later raised a VC fund). But the smart money is in the audience just to network with their peers and maybe to get a sense of the latest trends.

accelerator 290

accelerator mentorship peer-to-peer VC 290

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 30, 2014

People like Vinod Khosla, Keith Rabois, Brian Singerman, Marc Andreessen and others have all made head-scratching private comments to me that sounded so foreign to what I thought other people were doing in VC that they caused me to challenge and ultimately change some of my own views. How to network better ? “ Level Up ” 9.

advice 407

advice frameworks startup mix-use 407

TechCrunch

OCTOBER 4, 2022

This relationship also supplied Spleet with the critical network of landlords required to list multiple units when it went live; the pitch to landlords was that Spleet would bring proper KYC into the rental process and allow them to verify tenants and automate rent collection. Our solution on the tenant side was a no-brainer.

VC 131

VC real estate venture capital financing 131

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

This is going to be BIG.

MAY 4, 2021

Below is a link to the pitch video. There wasn’t any context around it—not exactly something I’d call a “pitch”. I explained that this wasn’t really a pitch because it lacked all sorts of context. Having been called out, I set up a meeting—but I didn’t do it to take a charity pitch. Who was the team?

pitching 243

pitching transportation consulting creativity 243

Hunter Walk

MARCH 3, 2025

When I’m scanning a pitch deck I’m basically looking to put it into one of two buckets – Traditional or Different. If you’re a VC raising your first fund, and you think you fit either of these descriptions, please let us know. of them, often as their first or second largest investor.

peer-to-peer 79

peer-to-peer VC investing investment 79

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 20, 2011

They have totally changed the way you run a VC firm, investing heavily in systems & events for their founders that are pushing the boundaries of the way our industry works. It is clear that he is simply passionate about being a VC and participating in this industry. What are the most common mistakes in first pitch?

capital 284

capital board VC pitching 284

TechCrunch

MAY 20, 2021

That’s the premise underpinning Polywork , a new professional social network founded by Lystable/Kalo founder, Peter Johnson. As the list illustrates, Johnson, an ex-Googler (and TC battlefield alum ), isn’t short of contacts to tap up for his new startup — having pulled so much VC into Lystable/Kalo.

networking 96

networking SaaS media VC 96

TechCrunch

JULY 15, 2021

We know how much you love a good startup pitch-off. Plus, you get to hear feedback from some of the smartest folks in the industry, thus learning how to absolutely crush it at your next pitch meeting with a VC. Extra Crunch Live is usually a combination of an interview with a founder/investor duo and an audience pitch-off.

pitching 99

pitching VC disruption startup 99

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 22, 2021

You don’t need everyone, you just need a few core believers and having a hard “why buy me” pitch makes it easier to find and convert those leads. a firm differentiator means that not everyone will buy into your thesis but that’s okay.

investing 375

investing investment ventures pitching 375

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 19, 2010

You’ve found a VC partner or principal who has invited you to the Monday partners’ meeting. This is true whether your at a sales meeting or at a VC firm. If one vocal person blurts out, “just give us the details, we all know social networking&# don’t assume that person speaks for the entire room.

advice 318

advice VC pitching venture capital 318

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 4, 2013

As a VC you want to feel like you have “proprietary sources” of deal flow. There is one source I never liked and no early-stage VC should – investment bankers. Before I tell you my reasons for never doing a deal that a banker intro’d I have to preface by where I think bankers are enormously helpful on VC deals.

advice 361

advice VC pitching entrepreneurs 361

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 5, 2014

In my experience many VC’s fall into this “I’m expected to know all the answers” trap. The more self-assured the VC is and the more impressionable the entrepreneur is the worse the outcome. We are not to lead them into some vision in our head of how their markets should work. It is unknowable.

peer-to-peer 337

peer-to-peer entrepreneurs consulting VC 337

This is going to be BIG.

JUNE 9, 2020

If you're in a more privileged position with lots of VC connections to pitch, you’ll either do one of the following things: You'll come right back at me, tell me why and how I'm wrong—because at this point you have nothing to lose.

founder 272

founder pitching VC opportunity 272