Urm, just read a great blog post by Seth Godin who managed to say the same thing I did in my previous post using only about 5% of the space. I guess that’s why he’s a published author! He writes a nice list of 15 ideas in a post entitled “The Realistic Entrepreneur’s Guide to Venture Capital“. I’ll snip-and-paste my favorite bits:
#3 – Investors want to invest in a project that’s tested. If you can’t make it work in the ’small’, why do you think it’ll work when it’s big?
#15 – The companies that VCs most want to invest in are the companies that don’t need their investment to survive.
To all of you folks out there hunting for VC, what do you think? You might think there are seed-stage investors out there who wouldn’t hold their investments to such high standards, but I’d wager that you’ll get MUCH better valuations if you satisfy these requirements.
Tony Wright is a founder and front-end generalist at a venture-backed startup in Seattle. He blogs about conversion-centric design, SEO, PR, fundraising, viral marketing, and occasional other geeky topics.