Part 3.

Part 3. On how to pitch, or what advice people with experience raising $100m+ rounds in the Valley gave

In short: you need cash, they don’t need anything that won’t potentially become the next Google. The fund doesn’t give a shit about 1–3x returns. A fund partner personally needs, over their whole career, to make one correct lead investment into a company-that-is-a-market (IPO/decacorn). After that they’ll walk around on pure swagger. That’s the reality and you have to accept it. So emotions run the show, not logic (because no logic is capable of predicting the future).

Best way to trigger emotions — tell your story. Your job is to create a sense of the moment and belief that what you’re doing is the next big thing.

Two key principles:
1/ the size of the success matters more than the probability of success. Like I said above, everyone wants one Google in the portfolio, not 10 exits at $100m.
2/ emotions over facts. Numbers almost never sell, what sells is “fear of missing the deal”.

The only question an investor should be asking in your pitch (ideally) is the investment terms, how much money and why. Everything else is just water.

Investors very rarely actually understand what you do, and even more so the tech. If they need to, they’ll bring in a consultant and drag you around, but let’s assume you can clear that easily and you’re doing something reasonable. Then what’s left as the dry residue is: want/don’t want at the level of the emotion from the meeting.

How to approach the process:
1/ the deck should literally be changing constantly. You got a question you didn’t expect — add the answer to the deck, remove what doesn’t land in meetings. Throw out all templates. The story and emotions matter — build the math around that.
2/ make a list of funds with the probability you can actually talk to them and your belief that they might like it or not, and who is ideal for you (study the market, deals, write to competitor companies). Don’t talk to people who aren’t in the topic and don’t understand your product and team at all. The cultural aspect matters (see who has already invested in Eastern European founders, they’ll trust you more).
3/ pack all meetings into a defined time window, best 2 weeks, maybe a couple months if the round is big. This matters to create momentum and the feeling the deal can slip away.

What’s important to understand: an investor’s job is very hard. Respect for their work matters. If you can sell to them, that’s a strong signal to the market that you’ll be able to sell to companies and people too. Because they have flow and drill this thought into your head: their job is harder than mine.

And I tell stories badly, so I don’t know what to advise you.