Anyone needs not to be trained or taught a lot on what it takes to make a pitch to a venture capitalist. A VC firm will fund you only on the basis of your business and your ability to build a great company out of it. Who has referred you, what clothes you wore, how awesome your presentation was and how proper your mail was would matter only marginally. In other words, VC firms want to see the real you, they want to stick to the point and, more than anything else, they want to understand your business. Dont unnecessarily spend energy, time and money on making a pitch to a VC firm, but focus more on the core point of making it understand your business. More so, because a VC firm also gets a hundred such pitches a month and really just wants to listen to the fundamentals, without wastage of time.
Whom to pitch to? The process of raising capital from VC firms can take a lot of the entrepreneur‘s time and energy. At the same time, there is the hope of raising capital and the viability of the business model attached to it. Therefore, it is important to pitch to the right VC firms. Imagine if you were to pitch to ten VC firms who were not appropriate for your start-up and refusals from them. It might totally demotivate you. VC firms are known to give a lot of suggestions on what entrepreneurs should do with their business to be able to raise capital or just to make it better. Many of these suggestions might be merely for the sake of making polite conversation and the VC firm might not have even given them a second thought. You should not work on too many of these suggestions from VC firms who are not right for your start-up.
Not all VC firms fund everything: You should not go looking for VC firms to pitch to. What is more important is to find start-ups and companies that have got funded in your industry, category, domain, stage and size of investment. Find the five most active VC firms. They need to be active because then they would know your domain and industry well and have larger companies in their portfolio. And not more than five because you should not become the talk of the town and if there is something wrong in your model or pitch, you can improvise it with others. If you have an angel investor, you should certainly meet VC firms who are known to your investor.
What would also help is speaking to the entrepreneurs of companies in that tracker and getting an honest view from them on venture capital, that particular VC firm and, maybe, also an introduction from them.
Rather than speak to someone, it is better to write them a short, direct and to-the-point email. VC firms are engaged in finding businesses that will become successful one day. If you are anywhere even close to that category, a VC firm will respond to you. They want to meet entrepreneurs as much as entrepreneurs want to meet them. So if you are not able to get an introduction, write to them directly. Learn more about how to make a pitch to a venture capitalist only at the University Canada West, one of the most admired universities in Canada.
