Brad Feld with Shane Mac

All right.

Hey everyone. We have Brad Feld here today. He's with The Foundry Group and he blogs at Feld.com. He's in the VC space and you help out a lot of young entrepreneurs, I see. So I just wanted to ask you what I think would be valuable for a lot of people is what not to pitch or what not to do to, you know, VCs, angel investors, or people with ideas that want to get their ideas in front of the right people and what they shouldn't do.

So a couple of immediate thoughts. One is make sure you know who you're talking to and what they're interested in. So I'll use me as an example. I only invest in software and internet-related companies. I only invest in companies in the US. It probably takes somebody about 2 minutes to figure that out just by trolling around on my website and looking at the kinds of stuff we invest in. I can't tell you the number of people that pitch me clean tech, bio, stuff from all parts of the world outside of the US and Canada. Thing 1 is just know your audience. Recognize that there is no such thing as a generic VC or a generic angel. You're pitching somebody who you want to have as a long-term business partner. Make sure they fit with what it is that your business is. That would be sort of a big overriding one. Second is recognize that a pitch, even if you're kind of giving your 15-second or 30-second elevator pitch, the person wants to have some connection to you. So, you know, I had this happen to me yesterday where somebody literally came up to me shook my hand, "Hi, my name is Joe." I said, "Hey Joe, I'm Brad," and then he immediately started talking, giving me his— it turned into 2 minutes before I could interrupt him and say, "Slow down, Joe. Who are you and what do you do? What's your background?" So give the person a little chance for some context at the very beginning of it so you at least make a connection, and most people will say pretty quickly, "So what are you working on? What are you doing?" etc. Also, don't let it go too far the other way. I'm standing with somebody and I'm waiting for them to say to me, okay, here's what I'm working on. Hey, what are you working on? Oh, you know, it's a startup.

Well, what kind of startup?

You know, it's a really interesting startup. You know, what are you working on? Well, I'm working on some startup stuff.

I have those too. It's like, come on, like, tell me about it. Another one, another, as I say, the last one that sort of happens all the time is the sort of evasive pitch, which is the person The email version of it is the person gives you a little teaser, "Hey, I'm working on an internet-related startup, wondering if you'd be interested in taking a look." "Sure, tell me more." The next email that comes back is, "Would you be willing to sign an NDA?" Or something comes back and it's so unbelievably vague as to be indeterminate. "I'm working on a software startup that's internet-related to do a website. It's going to transform a $27 billion industry." conquer the world. It's like, you know, well, okay, next email. Which $27 billion industry? What world and how are you going to do it? And the email that comes back again is suitably vague. It's like, just get to it. Like, quickly get to it.

What would be your advice to someone that's trying to like hoard their ideas or doesn't want to tell people? Or, you know, is that important? Should you, you know, be cautious with your ideas, or how do you perceive that?

I think it's silly to hoard your ideas, and it's silly to be worried about getting your idea out there. You know, at TechStars, which is a program I'm very involved in, we encourage people just to talk to everybody about what they're working on very openly. The ideas aren't the thing that creates the defensible opportunity, the long-term business, the great success. It's the execution of the idea. And most ideas in their formidable stages are crummy. I mean, you know, there might be a spark of insight in the idea, or the The very high level of the idea is brilliant, but you got to make progress against that idea. There are so many things that cause you to go down a path of success or failure executing against that idea that the more people you expose it to early on in the cycle, the better. Yeah, there is always the risk that you are going to run into a bad actor and that bad actor is going to milk you for information. That is part of knowing who you are talking to. If you create like you stand on the corner with the thing that is your idea, you know, sort of on a t-shirt and you just stand there and random people walk by, you're not getting any value from telling people about your idea, right? But if you're meeting with venture capitalists, you're meeting with angel investors, you're meeting with other entrepreneurs, you can at least decide before you tell them, uh, you know, whether or not there's potential competition or potential conflict or something like that. And if there isn't, you should go for it. And even if there is, I think you should go for it because I think that you never know where that leads. The other thing is I'm not sure that all the ideas are out there and everybody has better availability information. I've been doing this since the mid-1980s. Even back then, there was the same dichotomy there is today 25 years ago, which is you had some people that held their ideas tight, like, I'm not going to let anybody know I have this secret great thing. Then you had other people that just talked about what they're working on and thought about it. Especially at the formative stages. I think the people that were very open attracted much more interesting people, got many more people engaged in what they were working on, built a lot more interest and excitement about what they were building and creating, and ultimately in general had more success.

Awesome. Yeah, I find that you can't— if you don't tell people, you can't find people to help you.

Yeah, we had a thing in my first company, which I ran from '87 to '93, We had a couple of lines. One was our motto of our company was, "We suck less," because we're a software consulting company. Even today, most software consulting companies suck. Our job, our goal was to suck less than all the other guys. That resonated nicely with our customers. The other one was, "If you don't ask, you don't get." It's a very useful thing for somebody who, like me, is a nerd. And I was the CEO of the company, so I generated most of the business, especially at the very beginning of our company. And I learned pretty quickly that if I wasn't willing to ask, nothing ever happened.

Welcome to the Ask Summit, my friend.

There you go.

It's about asking questions.

Don't ask, you don't get. And the inverse is true. If you don't tell, nothing is going to come to you.

Cool. Well, thank you, Brad. And everyone, check out Brad Feld and Foundry Group. They're a great company helping out a lot of young Entrepreneurs and Techstars. I checked out, it's really cool. And then, uh, feld.com is his blog. Thank you, Brad, for taking the time out of your day.

My pleasure.