15 Jun These 14 Investors Have Urgent Tips For Your First Meeting
For startups considering the venture-backed route, an infusion of capital can be a pivotal moment that helps fill up the office, raise up regional or international outposts or get a product across the finish line. Really, venture capital is about having the resources to validate (or disprove) a business model. But the road to the term sheet, as any startup can tell you, can be a challenging one. It can start with doing loads of research, polishing slide decks to exhaustion and persisting until that first make-or-break meeting is set up. But what then? How can entrepreneurs leave that first meeting — whether it’s a full-on pitch or a chat over coffee — having raised real interest? We spoke to more than a dozen Philly investors about how their ideal first meeting with an entrepreneur should go. Read up before you head into the pitch room.
Mind the ‘shopping’ list
- Ellen Weber, Executive Director of Robin Hood Ventures
“[Entrepreneurs] should cover the problem they are solving or the opportunity, the product or service they have developed, the market size, how they are going to market, the competition, the team, the business model, 3 year high level projections, how much they are raising and use of funds, and terms if they have a term sheet,” Weber said. “In the ideal presentation, the entrepreneur covers these areas clearly and concisely. They do a great job of listening to questions and responding, and ideally have someone with them that can take notes regarding questions to be followed up on later.”
Ditch the script
- Vanessa Chan, Partner at Robin Hood Ventures
“Entrepreneurs always have a prepared ‘pitch’ that they want to deliver which gives investors a basic view of the industry and their company,” said Chan. “A great meeting is one where the entrepreneur has the confidence to abandon their canned responses and can verbally/mentally spar with me and admit if they don’t know something and will get back to me. The reason why this is important is that no entrepreneur has the perfect plan and they need to be able to listen and respond to changes in the market.”
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