
Dear VCs: Clean up your websites - mmastrac
http://venturebeat.com/2015/03/28/dear-vcs-clean-up-your-websites/ 
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Animats
Dear VentureBeat, clean up your web site.

 _Two_ giant popups in the first 10 seconds.

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sytse
Totally agree, why not put on your website what you'll offer to tell people in
the first 5 minutes of a conversation.

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orliesaurus
When I was working as a guest in Passion Capital's co-working space in London,
I always loved how clean and transparent their approach was with everything
they did. Clear terms, investment options and a lot of their docs is "open
source" so people know what to expect when they come around. ..and they're
super friendly!

Unfortunately that was the only VC/Angel exposure I have gotten so I don't
have much to compare it with, but I like to believe many others will be
following that trend.

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anigbrowl
Or what, you won't give us your money? Hahaha.

 _4\. Thine firm slide shall not be a wall of faces.

5\. Thine portfolio must be more than graven images._

Thou shalt not use archaic language unless thou knowest what thou art doing.
It is proper to speak of thine ass, and also to speak of thy donkey, but not
of thine donkey. Verily, thou doth sound like a pretentious ass.

~~~
thaumasiotes
> Verily, thou doth sound like a pretentious ass.

Surely you meant to say "thou dost sound"?

EME thy/thine and my/mine make for a more interesting case than old verb
conjugations, because present-day confusion about the verb conjugations stems
from the fact that they are no longer present in the language. That's also
true for thy/thine, but the EME word my/mine still exists as the two separate
words "my" and "mine". The fact that modern English draws a distinction
between what are in EME two forms of the same word causes no end of confusion
in modern speakers.

~~~
anigbrowl
Thou hast exposed me! I flee!

[http://www.stgeorgenorth.org/yahoo_site_admin/assets/docs/Wh...](http://www.stgeorgenorth.org/yahoo_site_admin/assets/docs/What_hath_God_wrought.81215716.pdf)
for everyone else.

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primitivesuave
The best way to get a meeting with a VC is a prototype, and I doubt they are
actually trying to encourage people to solicit ideas at them through their
website.

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webwright
A prototype doesn't get you a meeting with a VC.

It's usually a network thing. Founder X says to (slightly better connected)
Founder Y, "I'm raising a round. Who should I talk to?" Assuming Founder Y
thinks that an intro to Founder X is something investors would want, they say,
"I could intro you to Firm X, Y, Z."

Clever fundraisers do this in a systematic when when it's time to raise. They
make a spreadsheet of investors that might be a good fit, scour LinkedIn and
the firms' portfolio pages to see if they are connected with them, try to see
if the firm is a good fit (firm personality, conflicts, check size they write,
geographic focus, etc) and then start working on getting warm intros. They try
to get as many of these conversations going in parallel as possible, which is
freakin' HARD.

Which is where this article comes in. It's massively wasteful to have
conversations with investors which end quickly with "We don't do seed rounds,"
or "we only invest in New York" or "We already invested in a company that you
compete with", "we don't write checks that big", "you don't fit our investment
thesis", etc.

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sagivo
A lot of VCs believe that the only way to get them is via referral. this is
why they don't care about their site nor want you to contact them this way.
These VCs are usually also the same people who talk about how problematic is
the closed eco-system in the valley where you have to know someone to make it.

~~~
borski
e.g. [http://www.benchmark.com/](http://www.benchmark.com/)

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thegreatpeter
Yeah...

[http://www.cah.utexas.edu/db/dmr/image_lg/di_05812.jpg](http://www.cah.utexas.edu/db/dmr/image_lg/di_05812.jpg)

