Death by email.

Call first, email second. VC’s are busy people. Fear not interrupting them. You have their phone number! If you must email – three lines only. If the email is succinct, they’ll read it, like you did this. If you’re lucky they’ll respond.

Ideas & water

Once you have completed your financial guestimates (and they will be guestimates) you then usually discover you haven’t enough cash to fund it. Now it gets exciting. Enter the Venture Capitalist.

Forget everything you believe you know about business funding right here. This is not justifying your department share in the budget of conglomerate X. You are asking people to write you a cheque from there own savings account. You need to convince them of this:

“I will make you 10 times your cash by investing in me”.

Without revenue, it’s no easy task. They are investing in you first and your idea second. Don’t forget this. If either component of that equation is missing, forget it. The first serious Venture Capitalist we presented to said 3 things. “You guys are impressive, you’ll get your money. Your thinking is good. Your presentation is too long.” He didn’t say, “I think you’ve got a great idea”. In start up land great ideas are like water. Vital, but they’re omnipresent.