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I just wrote this in a quick email to a friend and thought I’d post here too.
A lot of people ask whether they need a deck when pitching to a VC. I don’t think a deck is required, most important is telling your story. But a deck often helps in framing and structuring the story and making sure that you get through all of the key points you want to cover. Here is what I wrote him:
My basic advice to people building decks is to use it to help tell a story for why you are doing this and how big you think it can be. I like a structure for something like this:
1) The problem in the world we’re going to go and solve (problem / space)
2) Our solution and why it uniquely addresses the problem (product)
3) How many people have the problem and why they will adopt it (market size / go-to-market)
4) Why we are the exact right people to go tackle this now (team)
5) How we will get there in the future! (fundraising and future plans / use of funds)
Some people put team first as way of introductions which is also good, and then you can transition from team to problem by telling a personal story around why you started this.
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Link reblogged from BRYCE DOT VC
My daughter dressed up as Justin Bieber for Halloween.
A few weeks ago this wasn’t a big deal.
She’s a Belieber through and through. Always has been. But when she started talking about costumes with kids at school she started to worry. All of the kids in her class and all of her friends…
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Great description of Management from John Sculley in an awesome overall interview:
JG: You said you aren’t a great manager. What makes a great manager?
JS: Really good managers want to turn one-off projects into as much of a routine process as they can. I am a project-centric leader. I like to work on projects and solve tough problems. Whereas a really good manager will say, “How do we replicate the processes so that when a problem comes up like this again we can routinely solve it?”
That is a very different skill set. It takes both to run a successful company.
I always tried to complement my creative problem-solving skills with people on my team who had more process and management skills, so as a team we were very successful. It’s important to understand what you are really good at and weak at so you can fill out the leadership team with all the needed talent to be successful.
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Link reblogged from BRYCE DOT VC
Think about it. When you go to visit a doctor each appointment starts with getting weighed, getting your blood pressure taken and checking your heartbeat. All of these sensors are now available (some in the Runkeeperstore). I could essentially skip this step by printing out my own data or giving my doctor access to all of the data I’ve been collecting.
I know it seems like a stretch today, but this is the direction we are heading. Just in the last year we’ve seen a stunning array of new, cheap, passive senors move into production or hit the market. New manufacturing processes, commodity hardware, open source software and ubiquitous online distribution are driving cost out of every part of the historical supply chain.
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Photo reblogged from Dave Morin
10 Levels of Intimacy in Today’s Communication
Ji Li is always impressive
