Fundraising is like an enterprise sales motion. Your goal is to try to sell part of your company, but every VC has their own buying process, just like you do. And with any enterprise motion, there are: ➝ Multiple stakeholders ➝ Different people need to be convinced about different things ➝ An economic buyer you need access to And so on. But the thing is: I only realized this once I made that analogy. The hardest thing when dealing with VCs is knowing whether you’re actually landing the deal or not. Are people actually telling you the truth when they say they’re interested? With VCs, they’re not motivated to tell you the news because their overall goal is to cultivate the relationship. So, map out the fundraising process as an enterprise sales motion. Then, the rest of the process will become intuitive. For example, if the VC tells you things are great, but doesn’t put you in touch with the economic buyer – then are they really interested? Thinking of it in this way has helped me understand the different players and what they’re actually saying between the lines. The best advice—ask them about their company evaluation process. Every firm operates in such different ways that there’s no point trying to figure out how they operate. If you ask them, they tend to give you pretty high clarity in terms of how they move companies through their process. PS: Apologies for the low-quality video here, my webcam didn't want to focus for some reason.
Tommy Clark
2mo
Love this breakdown 👏
🔥🔥