We have investments in a lot of companies that are growing very quickly. They end up on the calling (now emailing) lists for a bunch of VC firms who have an outbound deal flow program. These emails ofter appear immediately after a large financing is announced.
Recently, I’ve been forwarded a few of these emails from CEOs of companies I’m an investor in with the question “how do I deal with this?” I realized I was giving the same advice each time so I figured it was time for a blog post on the issue.
The first email that you get looks something like this.
Hope all is well. I want to reach out to introduce myself and reintroduce my firm as you may remember trading emails with one of my colleagues a few years back. I also wanted to pass along congratulations on the round you and the team raised. It is obviously a testament to the continued progress and success you and the team have made since our last check-in.
Given you raised capital recently, I don’t imagine there are any funding needs in the immediate future, but I wanted to reach out to put our firm back on your radar screen. We seek to invest $somebignumberM+ with a huge focus on internet and therefore wanted to reintroduce us as a relevant party for the future.
If you’re up for it I would love the opportunity to briefly introduce our firm, our strategy and portfolio, and discuss ways we might be helpful in the future. I look forward to catching up.
As a CEO, the real value to you right now is what someone like this can do for you. In addition, they are offering to introduce themselves to you in order to earn your trust and interest when you do a next financing. So taking a meeting where you (a) get a deep overview of them, (b) learn about their portfolio, and (c) ask them for specific help with specific companies in their portfolio is how you make this worthwhile while building the relationship.
My advice is to do the following
It’s always hard as an entrepreneur not to pitch your company. But resist in this particular case – use this kind of a meeting to learn as much as you can – about the VC firm, and what they know about the market you are playing in, and how they can help you right now. If you give them assignments and they don’t follow through you learn a lot. But if they do follow through, it tells you even more and can be helpful to your business.
On the heels of all the noise around Groupon’s $100m financing at a $7.5b (billion) post valuation, I thought I’d put out a call for “old VC term sheets – prior to 1990.”
My partner Jason Mendelson and I are working on a book titled Venture Financings: How To Look Smarter Than Your Lawyer and VC. The final draft is due at the end of February (feel free to give us your sympathy if you happen to see us between now an then) and based on my previous experience with our publisher (Wiley) on Do More Faster, I expect it’ll be out by the end of Q211.
The basis for the book comes from the Term Sheet series that Jason and I wrote on this blog in 2005. We’ve updated the series for the current reality of 2010 (of which much is very similar to 2005, with some differences), talk about lots of different twists that have appeared, and tell plenty of stories to illustrate what the implications of various terms and financing configurations are.
As part of this, I’m looking for some early VC term sheets. I started by trying to hunt down the original Digital Equipment Corporation term sheet (or letter describing the investment) from AR&D to Ken Olson but came up dry. Today, as I was working on some stuff, I realized it would be interesting to look at some term sheets from the 1970’s and 1980’s in whatever form they are in.
If you happen to be in possession of an older VC term sheet – either for a company that was successful or one that was a failure – I’d love to see it. You can email it to me if easy, or drop me a note and I’ll tell you where to fax it. I’ll make sure I honor your request to keep it anonymous if you want me to (either you, the company, or both) but of course would love the ability to weave it into the book where appropriate.