The Experience of Fund Raising

Last week we formally kicked off our fund raising efforts. We met with three top tier, Sand Hill Road VC's on one day. It just sort of worked out that way. The killer part of the day was that we received very positive responses from all three VC's. The first one, names withheld, listened for an hour and then told us that he would like a copy of my preso to show at the Monday partner meeting.

The second VC listened for an hour and then took the action item to introduce us to one of his portfolio companies to do due diligence on our business model and technology.

The third VC is inviting us back to present to a large audience.

I have given presentations to VCs since 1992. I have never had the interest in startup that we got last week!!

This week, we have introductions from a couple of law firms with another 20+ VCs and Angels. We already have one meeting set up for next week from those intros and two other VC meetings from other intros. By the end of this month, we will have spent a lot of time on Sand Hill Road!!

I am doing lots of due diligence on each VC which is also a huge time sink. However, it has helped to rule out at least one VC who has an investment that would be competitive with us.

We'll see where we end up at the end of the week.

Tom

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