Jameson Camp shares three lessons from Alex, a founder who raised from Sequoia, Greylock, and a16z. Keep your pitch deck simple because early projections are speculative. Make VCs chase you, not the other way around. Tell a story about billion-dollar outcomes, the only scale that matters to venture funds.
Yesterday over coffee, my friend Alex, who's raised from Sequoia, Greylock, and a16z, blew my mind when he explained to me why great founders have very difficult times raising venture capital. The simpler the deck, the better. It's because they know that everything is just made up at that point. If you just have an idea or you're very early stage, there's no way you can know what the projections will look like 6 or 7 years down the line. The second thing was incredibly counterintuitive and weird, but it's just that raising capital is like dating. When you start to get a VC interested in you, instead of getting really excited and chasing them, maybe be a little less available. You need to create scarcity in the same way that hot girl is scarce that you want to chase. The third thing was probably the most important, which is that you have to tell a venture-style story. That means that you cannot be talking about a $100 million business. The economics of their fund mean that they can only invest in things that they believe will have billion or $10 billion plus outcome. Tomorrow, let's look at some decks that actually raised some capital.
You wont believe what else the founder started #opensea #mergersandacquisitions #venturecapital
