{"id":530,"date":"2012-04-12T13:46:01","date_gmt":"2012-04-12T17:46:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.duck9.com\/?p=530"},"modified":"2012-04-12T13:46:01","modified_gmt":"2012-04-12T17:46:01","slug":"vcs-agree-to-meeting-problem-they-say-no-before-you-start","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.duck9.com\/blog\/vcs-agree-to-meeting-problem-they-say-no-before-you-start\/","title":{"rendered":"VCs Agree to Meeting. Problem: They say no before you start"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>by Larry Chiang<\/p>\n<p>This is classic. <br \/> This is cliche. <br \/> When a VC says &#8220;No, def no&#8221; BEFORE YOU EVEN START you&#8217;ve now a slew of\u00a0 choices.<\/p>\n<p> -1- Up and bolt.<\/p>\n<p> VCs really lack domain expertise. But they more than make it for it with street smarts and pattern recognition.<\/p>\n<p> They have treated countless entrepreneurs the method and manner Lawrence Black and Nicholas Chavez cited. The best thing you can do with a pitch meeting is prematurely leave. <\/p>\n<p> In continuing with Lawrence Black&#8217;s relationship metaphor. Someone breaks up with someone. Either the VC breaks off the meeting or you do. You pick<\/p>\n<p> -2- Ok&#8230; I will stay and wither.<\/p>\n<p> So choice two is stay.<\/p>\n<p> When they say, &#8220;WE ARE NOT INVESTING&#8221;<br \/> You say, &#8220;Cool. thx for your next hour. I totally appreciate it.<\/p>\n<p> I wanted to meet with you because your investing experience and board experience there at ____________, _________________ and ____________. not to mention ___________ and ___________. OH and _____________pure genius.<\/p>\n<p> I read your preso \/ notes from Web 2.0 Summit. Its on my startups treasure map wall. We used it to get to $1mm in revenue. So I should say thank you. and pay you.<\/p>\n<p> I brought my demo, but eff my demo. I had two specific questions that you can either answer now or email me later next week from your island \/ private plane with WIFI)<br \/> One, what do you think we should more specifically focus on? The consulting revenue that we bootstrapped up on OR the minimum viable product that we spoke at Columbus Ohio&#8217;s National Janitorial Credit Service Workers of American annual conference?<\/p>\n<p> Two, I read that on slide 12 of your comment to the Mary Meeker state of the Internet, you said mobile apps that focus on VC fico scores didn&#8217;t and doesnt scale. Do you think we can augment that app to also serve the asian american new immigrant market. I mean you married an Asian woman so should we PIVOT.<\/p>\n<p> I am sorry. I didn&#8217;t mean to say PIVOT. Are Eric Ries genius teachings coupled with Steven Blank&#8217;s customer dev and Mark McCormack&#8217;s sales teachings putting a dent in your deal flow?!<\/p>\n<p> Anyway, Eric Ries is a mentor. So is Paul Graham. I will see you at the YC Demo day?!<\/p>\n<p> Then BOLT<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>by Larry Chiang This is classic. This is cliche. When a VC says &#8220;No, def no&#8221; BEFORE YOU EVEN START you&#8217;ve now a slew of\u00a0 choices. -1- Up and bolt. VCs really lack domain expertise. But they more than make it for it with street smarts and pattern recognition. They have treated countless entrepreneurs the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-530","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-entrepreneurship","category-venture-capital"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.duck9.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/530","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.duck9.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.duck9.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.duck9.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.duck9.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=530"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.duck9.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/530\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.duck9.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=530"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.duck9.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=530"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.duck9.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=530"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}