Setting VC Meetings: Conclusions

In conclusion, VCs doors are much more open to entrepreneurs than most realize. I’m confident that with a good elevator pitch and executive summary any entrepreneur can set appointments with the appropriate investors by attending entrepreneurship community events, leveraging their service provider relationships and using LinkedIn. At Cryptine Networks, I have successfully deployed all of the methods described in this series of postings. If none of them work for you, it may be sign of a weakness in your business or possibly that your proposal simply isn’t fundable.

If you can't set any meetings after several months, this is a significant data point and I suggest takeing a step back and attempting to consider what would make your business fundable. The short answer is that most VCs are looking for a 10X return on the money the invest within 5-7 years. Thus, VCs look for home runs, not singles and they can't invest in features that are not stand alone businesses. Also, it is virtually unheard of for VCs to invest in services businesses because they don't scale quickly enough to provide the necessary IRR. In the future I will attempt to write more on what makes a business fundable, but in the mean time, Tim Oren has written a good post that can be found here.

Did I miss any good ideas on how to set appointments with investors? If so, please let me know because I’d love to share them with the rest of the entrepreneur community.