Congratulations! You sent the deck to your target VC and the VC’s associate responded to ask you to meet to discuss more your startup company.
Many startup founders already get really excited when they reach this point but unfortunately, a lot of them screw-up the potential investment opportunity from VC because they were not prepared for the first meeting.
Meeting with VC is pretty much like any first date. It’s more of an art than a science. Hence, there’s no specific guideline to guarantee you can ace that first meeting.
However, the tips below might help you survive through that first meeting and perhaps win the VC’s heart:
Research, research, and research
Any successful warriors know that you need to know the terrain before you jump into the battlefield. You as a founder should research as much as possible about the VCs that you’re going to meet and you can never ever miss-out on things such as their existing portfolios, investment coverage, and their average ticket size.
In addition, you also need to know the associate/analyst’s profile that you’re going to meet since they are the frontline of VCs and they will have a huge influence in the VC’s decision making.
Create a conversation
Just like being on a first date, meeting with a VC for the first-time also makes a lot of founders become nervous. To help reduce your anxiety, you should always treat the meeting as a conversation meaning that it should go as a two-way street.
The VCs will most likely ask you the most questions but you should also ask questions about the VC and give them some compliments about the recent achievement they’ve made.
Believe it or not, asking questions to VC will create a long-lasting good first impression about you and your company since it shows a serious interest from you in continuing the relationship with the VC.
Be concise
The time for your meeting with the VC will most likely be very limited so you need to be as clear as possible of who you are, what problems you’re trying to solve, how can your company provide the solution to the problems and be better than other competitors, why are you currently fundraising and what is it for, etc.
But always remember to assume as if the VC ‘does not understand’ anything about the problems you’re trying to solve or the technology you’re using so that it’s your most crucial task to make sure you explain everything to them in the most understandable way and make them curious about your company.
Always be respectful and professional
Even though the associate/analyst you’re meeting is still a fresh-graduate and being a VC is their first full-time job and they may not know much about the industry you are in, you should never treat them differently.
Most of the time the associate/analyst has a very significant influence behind the VC’s General Partner’s decision and once you create a bad-impression to the associate/analyst during the first meeting, your chance of having the second meeting with that VC will be close to none.
Never ask VC to sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement
Although your first 50 minutes meeting with the VC has been going very smoothly and you think they have some serious interest in learning more about your company, many startup founders still screwed-up their first meeting just because they ask VC to sign an NDA before proceeding further.
Why? The VC-Startup relationship is quite like a marriage. If you ask VC to sign an NDA, it shows that you do not trust them and you did not do your research about them (i.e. if you’re worried they might have a similar company in their portfolio) and there’s no reason for VC to go further down with you as well.
Only ask VCs to sign NDA if it’s absolutely necessary such as when you’re about to show a prototype that is still pending for patents.
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