Learning, Marketing

The top 5 tips to making a successful customer testimonial video

With the rise of video, many entrepreneurs are looking to find a new way to bring social proof to their apps and websites.

While the overview video is the best way to introduce your company or product, and there are various types of introduction videos you could use to showcase your startup, the customer testimonial needs to do three things:

1. Give prospects confidence that there are real people using the product, who are similar to themselves.

2. Help potential customers understand if this might “work in their environment”.

3. Outline to prospects what pain points your product may help solve in their own words and using their language.

It is important to script the customer testimonial video as well, and ensure that it looks and feels very professionally done.

Here are the top 5 tips I have learned by doing customer testimonial videos:

1. Use “users” in your videos and have them explain their day in the life pain that your product solves, instead of the decision maker taking in abstract terms of how your product helps the company.

2. Have more than one person from your customer be a part of the video. Or have 2-3 different customers be part of the same video. I have found that in 2 occasions, the “customer” who I featured in my video left the company and I had to remove the video (the customer requested it, since they did not want mis-representation) which cost us much angst.

3. To avoid the problem of having to remove the video completely because your “user” or customer leaves the company, shoot each segment of the video separately and ensure you will have the segments “individually produced”. That way if you have to produce the video by editing out a segment (because people leave or have new people appear) you can still do that.

4. Show your product being used by the customer in their office in your video. This ensures that people believe they are not paid actors, and instead are actually using the product for their daily business. I prefer to use 2-3 quick shots (pan and zoom) of the person in front of the computer or mobile phone clicking on certain sections of your product. When you use users in video, show their company’s logo or workspace to ensure the video is realistic.

5. Breakup your video into 5 segments – with each section being able to stand on its own. That way if you need multiple “cuts” – e.g. 30 second, 1 min, 1.5 min or 2 min you can do “stitch” them together easily.

Here are the 5 sections I recommend:

a) the pain point – preferably 3 thing they do in their day in the life, which hassles them. E.g. “It would take me 5 hours to generate the influencer list and I had to go to the search engine, then pull reports into Excel”.

b) their current solution or what they did before your product. E.g. “Our current solution was a client server product which did not allow our management team to view the reports on their mobile phone”.

c) their use of your solution – how are the using it daily, or how does it fit into their work processes. e.g. “With BuzzGain, we can put in 3-5 keywords, then understand who the right influencers are and quickly in a matter of minutes obtain the list of key outlets and publications. This helps us respond to client briefs quicker.”

d) how your product has solved the problem – the benefits they have obtained, preferably quantified in ROI terms – for example “after using BuzzGain our time spent on building reports reduced by 5 hours a week”, or “after using ABC product our sales increased by 2%”.

e) why do they like the solution OR why would they recommend your solution. E.g. “I would highly recommend BuzzGain because it helps me in my role daily and saves us time, which helps me focus on building client relationships instead of collating reports”.

Bonus tip: Ensure that you have the full title and correct spelling of your customers in your video at the bottom each time you introduce them on the video for 3-5 seconds. Most people do it only once at the beginning, but I have found, that many people do not watch video intently enough to remember to focus on the name and title. It is always better to show the name and tile of the customer at the bottom of your screen for 2-3 times during your video.

Here is a great example from GoodData of a customer testimonial video I like.

Entrepreneurship, Marketing

How to write the script for your #startup overview video (with examples)

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Before you produce the overview video for your startup, you will need to understand what its purpose is and that will dictate the type of video you will create.

When I produced the 2 min video for BuzzGain, the first thing that surprised me the most was how quickly 2 minutes flies by.

There are 3 important things I learned during the process of creating the video, which will help you put together the outline of your video before you actually produce it. I still cringe at my first video produced and made so many mistakes (voice clarity, etc), which I wish I knew before.

1. The outline needs to be clear about the only ONE outcome you can achieve – e.g.to get people to understand what your product does or to show them your demo, and ONE call to action – signup for your service, signup for a newsletter, subscribe to your blog, etc.

Most entrepreneurs forget this important item. There’s only ONE thing you can achieve. You might as well figure out what it is and focus on that alone.

2. For a 2 minute video the maximum number of sentences you can comfortably speak and have people understand is less than 40. This should force you to choose your words carefully and ensure that you dont over engineer the demo video. Dont try to cram too many ideas, concepts or topics in your overview video.

Speaking faster than normal does not count, and it makes the video difficult to watch.

3. The best way to put an outline is to follow the Say this, Show this approach. In this approach, you have a 2 column word document where you will write exactly what you will say (audio) and on the right column what will be shown (visual) on the screen.

Overview Video Script
Overview Video Script

The alternative scrip format that I followed above uses a 3 column format with the optional 3rd column to show the text on the screen to go with the visual.

Here is the set of steps I took to write and produce the video:

1. Writing the goal: Time taken 15 minutes to write and 3 days to refine. I had to test the goal and understand who the real audience was for the video. There were 5 things I had to be absolutely clear about:

  • Who was the right audience for this overview video? – was it the PR Associate, the PR manager, the owner of the PR firm, or the communications manager at the large company?
  • What was the goal of this video? – to tell them about our product, to give them an overview so they know what it does
  • What was the desired outcome and my call to action? Did I want to have them sign up for BuzzGain? Did I want them to subscribe to the blog – since the production of the video happened before the product was ready or did I want them to take the next step – which was to view the next video on BuzzGain’s technology and how it worked.
  • What was the desired flow? What problem did I have to surface (based on my audience)? What pain point did I have to mention? How did I have to show the solution? Did I have to show the differentiation?
  • What were the assets I had to produce to make the video happen? Besides the flow what were the screen shots, the text, the logos, etc. that I needed to have ready?

Here is the original BuzzGain_Flash_Demo_Script_v6.

You will notice, that it has the 3 column format and actual screen shots.

2. Practicing the story telling (audio) and ensuring I hit the key points before the visuals

  • Speak into a microphone and record the entire script 3-4 times before you go and produce it with the video.
  • Play that to 10 people (without the visuals) to get feedback on the script and the voice, tone, key points etc.

The key reason for this step is to ensure that your story can be told even without the visuals. That way you can use the same script when you meet folks at networking events and dont have the visuals to go with it.

3. Going to the studio to actually record the audio in production quality.

4. Putting together the screen shots or PowerPoint slides that go along with the video.

5. Producing the video by mixing the audio and visuals. During that time (2009) I had Camtasia Studio and Jing project as tools to help produce this. I loved Jing project, but migrated to Studio since I found it more feature rich. There are many other tools you can use as well.

6. Uploading the video on YouTube after refining it multiple times and producing 7 useless videos which I did not like. Today I’d use a high quality HD video hosting site like Vimeo.

7. Embedding the video on our front page of the website using YouTube embed.

Learning, Marketing

How much does it cost to get an overview video done? By type of video

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When creating startup overview videos, “begin with an end in mind” is more true than anything else. I have noticed by reviewing over 30 company videos from the latest YC cohort, that the length of the videos is directly proportional to the level of commitment required for the call to action. If the level of commitment requires you to sign up for a 30 min demo, the video was longer (3 min) or if it required you to sign up for the laundry service (3.5 min) versus it required you to download a free app (2 min).

The call to action (what you expect your visitors to do next) determines the length of your overview video.

While we talked about format of videos yesterday, today I want to focus on the categories of videos.

There are 5 types of videos, with different goals and slightly different calls to action.

The overview video is an introduction to the company, the demo video would like you to sign up for a free trial, the tutorial video helps you get further along on the onboarding process, while the testimonial video is social proof, requesting you to explore pricing and finally the storytelling video urges you to get on a waiting list.

Most, if not all of the videos ask you to give them something in return for watching the video – that’s typically an email address.

1. Overview: Typically this video is the first a company creates because they have “finally” nailed what they do, for who and why it matters. This type of video might involve professional cameraman, producer and multiple shots and actors at times.

Cost – $5000 and above.

2. Demo: In this type of video there are 2 formats – one that’s professionally done and one that’s done by the founders. In the professional done video, the voice over is usually an actor and the script is written by them after input from the founders.

Cost – $0 (DIY – your time is precious though) to $3000

3. Tutorial: Most tutorial videos are made by the team – either a marketing person in your company or by the founders themselves. Since many tutorials are typically made for different aspects of the product, these tend to be self made and cost much less to produce and deliver.

Cost – $500 to $3000 – depending on the amount of time to produce. Expect every minute of video to take 1 to 2 hours of production.

4. Testimonial

5. Storytelling: These  are typically the most expensive videos to make, most being professionally produced, longer format and have actors or hired artists as well. They tell a story in the day in the life of a typical user.

Cost: From $5000 to $15000 depending on the number of hired artists, production quality and required animation.

Take a look at this storytelling video as well for a professionally done example. (Sorry Embeds were not permitted).

Entrepreneurship, Learning, Marketing

What I learned from looking at 30 startup videos of the recent YC batch

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Video is the fastest growing medium on the mobile web. Turns out even if you are a B2B company these days, the word-of-mouth affiliation you need is often easier to achieve if you have a video more than text, audio or images. Of the 114 companies in the lastest YC cohort I looked at, most had a video on their website. I focused on the ones that had done a good job of explaining their overview using video.

Not surprisingly even CIO’s and traditional B2B buyers also prefer to view videos to reading whitepapers these days.

As a startup, if you are in the consumer space, I’d wager that you want to get your overview video faster than your “text website” which might be SEO friendly. Why?

Most of the early influencers and younger audiences are using YouTube as their search engine more than Google.

So, having reviewed 30+ videos from startups that graduated from YC last cohort, what did I learn about the types and kinds of videos you need for your startup?

I am going to assume that you are just launching your app / service or about to launch it soon. What you are trying to do in less than 2 min is give potential customers and prospects a chance to understand the problem you solve, how you solve it uniquely and how they benefit from the problem solved. I have noticed these 5 types of videos that startups have used so far.

Types of Overview Videos
Types of Overview Videos

In most cases the “goldilocks” overview is less than 2 minutes and there are 7 popular formats for these videos:

1. Product tour on mobile or web: In this type of video, there is a person “showing” the app on their mobile with some upbeat background music. In many ways it is more a demo than necessarily a overview, but it serves the purpose well to get people to understand “what the product or company does”. It was hard to figure out which of these were actually using the product live versus screen captures, but slick production was the key.

2. Live action video with professional actors: As it suggest these are much more produced and directed, and will cost your more, but they tend to show “real” product users in “real” scenarios. I think these are pretty expensive if you are bootstrapped, costing upwards of $10K in most cases, but among consumer Internet (eCommerce especially) startups they seem to be pretty popular.


3. Animated Simple video: In this type of video, there are props used with simple cutouts and voice over. In most of these videos, I found that the startups used animation to to explain abstract complex, or non-intuitive problems, largely in B2B scenarios.


4. Whiteboard explanation: Fairly common as well, is two or sometimes just one person going to the whiteboard explaining what is it the startup does. In many cases, these are fairly technical products and companies, so Open Source product companies tend to use them the most.

5. PPT based slide videos. Used when the founders are not technical, bootstrapped and have strong B2B backgrounds in sales or operations. Since they are unable to put a professional looking video, these are used by folks who dont have a shipping product yet. They are not very effective, but I think they are better than text based pages.

6. Screen capture: Typical to the #2 type, these “show” product, but the screen capture videos are less professionally done. Authentic to a fault, they tend to be quickly done, rather poorly produced, but effective to “demo” the product more than give an overview.

7. Live story with founders: Rarely used, but common in Kickstarter campaigns, these are when the founder (s) are a key part of the sales pitch.


Over the next few days I will showcase a series of posts on the use of video, the types of video and some techniques I use to produce better startup showcase videos.

Entrepreneurship, Sales

How to build a wide and deep network of relationships as an entrepreneur?

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Initially when you are looking to hire a person in your company, you will hire “from your network”. The challenge is to have a good network that’s diverse and varied to help you bring those critical “early believers” on board.

One of the most difficult hires for most developer / technical people is hiring that first sales person.

There are many types of sales people entrepreneurs can hire – you can make out the different types of sales people by their reviewing their resume first.

There are 3 types of sales people a startup needs initially and maybe a 4th type later when they get bigger.

Startup sales people are not responsible for revenue but for payroll, so you should hire someone with the mindset that they are doing something very important and not just “sales”.

The hustler will get you any deal and will focus on getting you in the door quickly to open opportunities.

The relationship sales person will open doors to the few, but you will need to supplement her with other technical and sales resources.

The process or consultative sales person is good when you have a clearly defined sales process you need to scale.

The account manager is great when you have to expand your footprint within your existing customers.

The four types of sales people are best segmented by the depth and breadth of their relationship building efforts.

Types of Sales People
Types of Sales People

In the chart above I have tried to segment them based on my experience of working with these kinds of sales people. I dont think it is perfect, but it gives you a framework to think.

This could be a framework you use for your personal entrepreneurial journey as well, as you build your own network.

The best entrepreneurs have a broad (wide) and deep network.

They use the network to hire, recruit customers and attract partners. You know these folks who can not only help you get to the 2-3 people you need to talk to quickly to validate something but also help you canvas the 20-30 folks you need to get feedback from.

Building such a network is hard and takes time. Most people have 3-5 good friends and colleagues who they hang out with often and maybe 10-20 folks they work with on and off. Others have 500+ LinkedIn connections, but wont know more than 5 of them very well.

To build a wide network you need to have the mindset to seek out new people each time you have a question or run into a challenge. That’s not normal behavior for most people.

To build a deep network you need to invest time with a few folks and really get to know them, not only by working together but also personally.

The best way I have found to build a deep network is to find projects that mutually benefit others based on common interests.

The best way to build a wide network is to find a way to help as many people as possible for any type of request.

All this takes time, which is why you have to prioritize your relationships. In the early stages of your entrepreneurial journey, depth of relationships beats breadth, so make sure that you have the 3-5 people who you can count on, and then look to build adjacent relationships to grow your network.

Mentors, SaaS, Sales

The top 5 things you need to do after you are hired as the first #salesperson at a #startup

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This is a follow up to the post top 5 things a founder should do after hiring the first sales person at their startup. Congratulations. You have been hired as the first salesperson at a hot startup. Here are the top 5 things you need to do before, during and after coming on board.

1. Speak to as many customers as possible to understand “Why did they buy”? Ask the founders to help connect you to existing customers before you join so you can clearly understand why customers are buying. Is it because of the relationship the founder has (most likely at early stage startups), or are they solving a real pain point? Is it obvious there is a pain? Will there be budget allocated for this pain? Help the founders document the set of steps in the sales process during this phase as well.

2. Find out what your disciplined schedule will be for the first 30 to 90 days. Besides building your pipeline of business, there should be nothing else you should be working on. Whether it is researching 20 prospects, cold-emailing 20 potential targets or engaging with 20 candidate customers on LinkedIn, figure out the basic unit of activity and the way to measure it consistently.

E.g. Your basic unit of activity might be to spend 5 min researching a prospect on LinkedIn and understanding what your subject line should be to them and 5 min to craft an email that will help you send a response, followed by reviewing all the people in your suspect list from the previous day. Follow the disciple consistently.

3. Write down 10-20 A/B test headings, subject lines and messages that you will test during your pipeline development phase. You will need to test your Subject lines, the time you email prospects, the call to action, the collateral you will use to incent prospects to engage with you. The founders may already have a message they use, but dont take that at its face value. You will need to find the top 3-5 things your prospects will care about and the top 3-5 things they are willing to do as a next step or the 3-5 things they need to be educated about during the sales process. You job is to try and have enough permutations and combinations of these pain points, calls to actions and collateral till you hit the top 3 combinations.

E.g. Try the 3 top industry news items as headlines rotating and also your top 3 benefits, then the top 3 pain points or the top 3 questions on their mind as your subject lines.

4. Align on a system (Excel works just as well, if you dont like CRM systems) you will use to track your activity with your founders. Initially you will not have an immediate term wins, so in the absence of sales, activity will have to be measured as a proxy for outcomes. Whether it is # of sales calls per day or the # of demos per week or the # of responses to emails and phone calls that you will have to track, find a way to measure it, and track it diligently.

E.g. Put a simple spreadsheet with names of companies, target people, status (1st email sent, No response, Not interested, Call back in 3 months, No budget, etc.) and use a color-coded system for follow ups.

5. Network religiously to find a way to help potential partners who will help you after you help them. Many of the folks in your existing network may be able to help, and they may have an inclination to do so since you are now at a “startup”. Use the fact that you are at one to your advantage. Most people I know love helping and engaging with entrepreneurial-minded people and want to help early stage risk-takers. Even if you dont have a prospect in your network, it does not hurt to ask.

E.g. Last week, many of the participants at our customer day, at the accelerator were not prime targets for one of our companies in the Health care segment, but many had “friends” or “ex colleagues” who were now in hospitals and they were willing to help.

Mentors, Sales

The top 5 things you need to do after you hire your first #salesperson at your #startup

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After the initial 5 or so customers and exhausting your personal network, and having product market fit, you are likely to look outside and hire your first sales person. Here are the top 5 things you need to do before, during and after you hire that individual.

1. Ensure you have set the right expectations for yourself, cofounders and the new sales person. If the sales process is long, dont expect the sales person to make it any faster initially. If you have no leads to start them off, dont expect them to bring a pipeline and if your customers are expecting a POC and trial before they are willing to consider purchase, dont expect the sales person to be able to close a sale before they experiment. You should also have the expectation that the sales person will take 2 times your average sales cycle to build their sales pipeline. So if your average deal takes 3 months, expect them to take 6 months to get their pipeline “filled“.

I am often surprised at how much entrepreneurs and cofounders expect from a new sales person, if they have not been able to close an opportunity themselves. They often assume that since the sales person is a “professional” they will make magic happen. That’s highly unlikely.

2. Document and help the new person understand the sales process as well as you can. A blow-by-blow account of every activity in the sales process is better than a top level set of steps.

This step is very useful to also understand what you need to provide in terms of sales tools, marketing materials and collateral, to the sales person to make them successful during the sales process. If the 2nd meeting requires a demo, have it ready. If the best way a customer is convinced is to do a POC (Proof Of Concept), then have a checklist of things the customer needs to have ready for a POC.

3. Help your sales person fill up their pipeline in the first 30-60 days. Remove all distractions that your new sales person has by ensuring that they are not responsible for “strategy”, “blogging”, “SEO”, “fund raising”, or any other thing that makes them less productive. Their sole aim should be to sell and to do that they need to build their pipeline.

The last thing you need to do is to have the sales person’s time filled with non-selling activities. They will likely want to help and get excited with all the other value added activity, but that’s the thing you dont need from them. A not so great sales person will likely bring up all these items towards the end of the quarter when they did not make their quota as excuses.

4. Go on the first 5-10 sales calls yourself to help them learn the ropes. If you have hired an inside sales person, make them a “listener” in the first 3 calls, then be an active listener in the next 3 and finally a passive listener in the next 3 calls.

It is important for you to understand if the sales process is different if a founder goes to meet prospects versus a sales person. It is also important to gauge the sales person’s ability to handle objections, prospect questions and also understand the politics of the customers’ organization. It also helps for them to hear you pitch your product, or vision or benefits.

5. Segment the right prospects based on your current customers to ensure they dont chase the difficult or slow to convert prospects. Until the first few deals happen, the sales person will be on edge and they will get frustrated if they make no progress. If they are good, they will likely leave on their own, and you will have to start all over again.

Give them hard qualification criteria on who makes the ideal customer – if that is an early adopter, then you need to define their budget, behavior, title, size, industry, and be as clear as possible. There are not too many early adopters, so I highly recommend you only give them less than 10-25 prospects (cold or warm) to start with to give them confidence and help you build conviction that they can sell this.

Angel investing, Community, eCommerce, Funding, India

Dealflow management is now harder than fundraising for #microVC in India

In 2008 (before Angel List) there were roughly 1000 technology startups in India starting each year. of these about 50+ got funded by VC each year according to Thomson Reuters.

The percentage of services (consulting, IT enabled services, BPO, outsourcing) companies was about 29% – those that started and 33% of those that got funded.

The number of eCommerce companies was about 3% of the total.

Services and eCommerce Companies India
Services and eCommerce Companies India

Fast forward to 2014 and those number of companies starting at 22% of the total for services and 5% of the total for eCommerce.

The structural changes of the services companies have changed as well. We have gone from 8% of the companies in IT Services to 5% from 2008 to 2014.

Service Category Startup in India
Service Category Startup in India

While Thomson Reuters does not break out the data, anecdotal evidence suggest that there are a lot more digital marketing & design outsourcing companies now than before.

The number of eCommerce companies has been steadily increasing as a % of companies started, but has increased significantly as a % of funded companies and a % of total funding.

The only other category, which has grown (for which I dont have a breakout again) is software as a service (SaaS).

Over the last 7 years, the number of Micro Venture Capital firms has also grown. We have gone from none in 2008 to 5 in 2014, and I think we will end up at about 10 Micro Venture Capital firms (those that have less than $25 Million in capital to invest) in 2015. These include Angel Prime, Oris, India Innovation Fund, Blume Ventures, and others.

I have talked to about 5-10 angel investors and industry veterans who are all looking to start their own Micro VC, seed fund and combination accelerator or incubator in India over the last 3-4 months.

In 2008, the average amount of time it took to raise a fund (regardless of size) was about 9 – 12 months. That number is lower for Micro VC funds, obviously, but we have no way to know how long it would have taken.

In 2011 of the 3 funds that raised, the average was about 7 months.

This year, I am hearing funds that are < $25 Million close their raise in less than 4 months.

That means the time taken to raise their fund has dropped. It is easier for fund managers to raise their capital, they can do it in shorter periods of time and they can raise more than they initially desired.

The challenge for the fund managers seems to be no longer raising capital, but efficiently deploying it.

The gold standard for VC investing has been proprietary deal flow (startups that come to the investor for funding exclusively and go to no other investors). That’s becoming harder for all VC’s now.

If the number of companies starting up has grown significantly (as from the graph above) and the % of non services companies have grown as well, then there is a real democratization of founding startups.

So the problem has now moved to sourcing, building a brand for your Micro VC firm and convincing entrepreneurs that you are the “smartest” capital available.

The best entrepreneurs have multiple sources of funding, and they have many investors of different type chasing them.

The challenge for Micro Venture firms with no brand visibility or “magnet” founders is that their deal flow is largely limited.

From our own data, I can confidently tell you the “best” deals are usually referrals, but 3 in every 5 companies we get into our program are non referrals. Speaking to Accel and Helion last week, I confirmed that 25% of their funded opportunities were cold (unsolicited).

So while the Micro VC fund manager may have a decent network, their biggest challenge is going to be that they will not be able to attract at least a quarter of deals which come because of having a good brand in the startup ecosystem.

The problem for a lot of the Micro VC’s is going to be that they have poor quality deal flow or deal flow that’s not proprietary.

While they will still go to many events, and review Angel List startups, I suspect they will have a tougher time getting good quality companies to apply.

The bottom line is that now it is as hard for the investors to get good companies as it is for the entrepreneurs to get good investors.

Which is why I love this quote –

“Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up, it knows it must outrun the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning in Africa, a lion wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the slowest gazelle, or it will starve. It doesn’t matter whether you’re the lion or a gazelle-when the sun comes up, you’d better be running.”

― Christopher McDougall, Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen

Funding, Learning

Why your #startup #fundraising process should be very similar to your college application process?

There are over 4000 universities and colleges offering 4 year degree program for students graduating from high school. Of the 20+ million students that apply, 13 million get into the college undergraduate programs. Of the 13 million students enter 4 year under graduate programs each year and only 2 million graduate from the programs.

So, it is pretty obvious that while the acceptance rate of students into college is fairly high, the graduation rate from undergraduate programs is fairly low.

The graduation rate from the “top and elite” 100 colleges is much higher than the rate from the bottom 3500 colleges. So it make sense to get into a top college if you want to ensure you successfully graduate.

There are 800+ venture investors that fund companies each year in the US. Of the 30K+ companies that are looking for VC funding, about 3900 get funded. Of the 3900 companies that get funded each year, only 1200 actually have exits.

The % of companies that get funded is fairly low, while the “success rate” is reasonably decent,

The similarity of the college application process and get institutional or angel funding process is striking if you consider top entrepreneurs and top investors.

The top investors are most coveted and so are the top entrepreneurs. They are the ones with the most offers and have “competing” term sheets or startups looking to seek their attention.

Most college applications are coached by career counselors to apply to about 8-10 colleges, with a 3 level system – 3 of them are safeties, 4 are good matches and 3 are reaches.

Having been a fund raising advisor to over 102 startups over the last 3 years, I’d highly recommend you follow a similar process with different numbers to raise funds at any stage of your startup.

To raise funds for your startup use a fishing pole not a fishing net.

Here are some assumptions I make. 1) Smart money is better than just money – all things being equal you are better off raising money from an investor who can help advice you and connect you 2) Fund raising is important, but not the goal. The goal is building a great company.

That’s the best advice I can give entrepreneurs. Let us assume you are in the SaaS space and are looking to raise $1 million for your post accelerator round. There are less than 50 angel investors and micro VC fund who might be the best fit for you. There are exceptions, and you *might* get a good VC firm interested, but that’s a crap shoot.

I would recommend you start your fund raising process by building a list of the 50 VC’s.

Then put them into buckets of safeties, good matches and reaches.

Try your pitch first (email connections and warm introductions help) with the safeties, then try the good matches and finally go with the reaches.

That way you can tweak your pitch and model consistently and keep getting feedback as you learn more about what investors like and have problems with your company.

Entrepreneurship

Awesome quote modified: Whether you are big or small you better be innovating

2 Comments

“Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up, it knows it must outrun the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning in Africa, a lion wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the slowest gazelle, or it will starve. It doesn’t matter whether you’re the lion or a gazelle-when the sun comes up, you’d better be running.”

― Christopher McDougall, Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen

The personal blog of Mukund Mohan