Going to Raise VC? Here’s a Primer on Process, People & Powerpoint Deck @Netgarden

Av
@Revaliente pitching for iFacturas in Zaragoza
You never learn how to rise money by VC. Startups are different. The Zeitgeist is different. The VCs are different. Your ideas also are. So keep learning and keep training!

A post from netgarden's posterous has the whole story. Here is a part:

What should be in the deck? Some variation of the following (this is a suggested order)
  • Bio of top 3 people in the company.  Short sentences, bullet points, easy to read.
  • Problem definition (with the market … it’s why you exist)
  • How you solve that problem conceptually at the highest level
  • Details on the solution
  • [Demo could go here]
  • Why you believe there is economic value in what you do / how you think you can monetize one day
  • Competition
  • Progress to date of your company (when started, key milestones, what shape is the product in, any pilot / beta customers, financing)
  • Market sizing
  • Potential future exit possibilities
  • How much are you raising, how long will it last, key milestones you plan to hit before the next round
You can vary from this but these are the key themes are the ones you need to cover.  And you should have a narrative, which ties your whole story together.  You should have 10-12 slides and anything else that is detailed should be in your appendix.  I think it’s good to have a 10-20 page appendix that shows the details of the market, your product / roadmap & progress-to-date.
The “exit” slide is controversial but as I discuss in the video – necessary no matter what anybody else tells you.  Here’s the deal: ultimately you’re likely to sell your company, not IPO.  Don’t talk about wanting to sell any time soon.  But you need to talk about who might “some day” be interesting in what you’re building and why.  Ultimately VCs are in the busy of making returns and whether they acknowledge it or not for most investors it will form some part of their decision on whether to invest or not.  And if you don’t plant the seeds they will fill it with their own ideas.  Better that you expand their thinking.  Trust me.
Strongly recommended if you think that you might want to raise money from VCs in the next 12 months. Clear narrative and lots of specifics.

Populære innlegg fra denne bloggen

Predicates in Core Data

Av
Database programming is all about filtering and sorting tables linked to each other. According to the book Core Data , «Core Data is Apple’s object graph management and persistency framework for iOS, OS X, watchOS, and tvOS.» In a sense, predicates are an object version of the WHERE clause in SQL. Just like NSFetchRequest represent the FROM clause in SQL. I never have had problems with WHERE and FROM in SQL, but the predicate format strings in Core Data has been quite a struggle for me. I don’t think the struggle is only my fault. Predicates should clearly be thought, at least to me, as a method of writing WHERE clauses. Here is some notes from tutplus’ Core Data and Swift: Relationships and More Fetching : let predicate = NSPredicate(format: "%K == %@", "last", "Doe") The predicate format string uses %K (K stands for Key) for the property name and %@ for the value. let predicate = NSPredicate(format: "%K >= %i", ...
More...

How To Disable Google’s Personalization Of Search Results

Av
Bilde
Do you want to know what the rest of the world gets as answer for their search, instead of what Google thinks you may want to see? I do, therefore the post from MakeUseOf.com by Ann Smarty did catch my interest. She explains it well, both for one-time use and how to change your firefox and chrome browser, and I just copy the one-time part: 2. Disable Google Personalization: One-Time (Browser Independent) Again, you may like the feature and the fact that Google tries to show you what you really want (your favorite sites or sites you are more likely to like on top), but in some cases you will want to see “real” results (for example, to check how your own website is doing). In this case, what you need to do is manually modify the search query URL path: just add this parameter: pws=0 The ‘pws=0′ parameter removes the search personalization: If you don’t want to add the parameter manually, use this browser bookmarklet (courtesy of  Google System Blog ): Turn off Google perso...
More...

InvestorForum by VentureLab in Oslo a success story #startups

Av
Bilde
Photo from Hotel Continental website 200 persons, mostly investors, joined to see what 20 startups could offer in Oslo after the finance crisis . I was astonished to see so many foreign investors, from US and from UK. There was in my opinion a lot of great projects . Since I also presented, I could only follow some: Yes Game : They have ingenuos  reduced the chess board from 8X8 to 5X6 by taking away all second officers. In that way they have create a Chess Attack, which can take you into the final stage of a chess party immediately. They have it for iPhone and very important, also as a physical board. uformia created software very well suited for 3D printing. The CEO Cherie Stamm was an American living in Norway. She softened every Norwegian heart when the said the reason was our beautiful nature. 3D Printing is in my opinion a possibility for the Western society to rebuild the manufacturing industry we lost to China. kikora presented a math editor, which evalua...
More...