

What do you do after an investor says yes? - ashrust
http://blog.sendhub.com/post/114498885892/what-do-you-do-after-an-investor-says-yes

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mrmch
One of the best parts of this, illustrated by the use of red squares, is that
"sit and do nothing" isn't part of fundraising.

Common YC advice for fundraising is "optimize for speed" (with valuation,
amount, brand names, etc, coming second). Don't get trapped in long diligence
cycles, waiting for a lead, or other road blocks.

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davros
Outside YC, chasing a 'yes' actively to turn it into a completed investment is
even more important. Optimize for speed is closely related to optimize for
outcome.

One minor addition to the chart - if investor asks for a longer timeframe,
respect that - and chase other investors!

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ashrust
But a longer a timeframe where? I think waiting on signing docs after agreeing
to them is far from ideal, same goes for waiting on wiring the money, unless
agreed in advance.

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patio11
Relatedly: write one of these for your sales process (certainly for enterprise
sales, but very useful for low-touch/medium-touch as well). It will save your
sanity.

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robodale
I second that - you always know what to do next...

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codingdave
In my mind until you can answer 'Yes" to the question of "Have they signed?",
then they haven't said yes.

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jacquesm
They haven't said 'yes' until they've wired the money.

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ashrust
The gap between 'yes' and money in the bank, is why so many people have
trouble with this, imo.

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nitrogen
A note to anybody having problems loading the flowchart image: some
combination of HTTPS Everywhere and other privacy-related extensions causes
the image to fail to load with an Amazon S3 or CloudFront-like error from
Edgecast CDN.

The broken image URL:
[https://gs1.wac.edgecastcdn.net/8019B6/data.tumblr.com/d92e8...](https://gs1.wac.edgecastcdn.net/8019B6/data.tumblr.com/d92e89be88474faafb5122dc60a6e450/tumblr_nlowhamlb31r7m6x8o1_r1_1280.png)

The correct image URL:
[http://40.media.tumblr.com/d92e89be88474faafb5122dc60a6e450/...](http://40.media.tumblr.com/d92e89be88474faafb5122dc60a6e450/tumblr_nlowhamlb31r7m6x8o1_r1_1280.png)
(https also works)

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nroach
Interesting that there's no step in the flowchart for an investor to exit the
flow after a verbal yes. A 100% close rate may be normal for a YC company but
in my experience it's not typical. You want to get a "No" as fast as possible,
which I've seen happen at every stage of the pipeline, including after signed
docs (although rarely).

~~~
ashrust
I agree, we've never closed 100% of yeses. However, dragging it out with one
of those investors, assuming they refuse to say no is worse for them imo as it
creates a clear paper trail of bad behavior which hurts their reputation.

~~~
mattschmulen
This is true, investor and for that matter 'executive' lock-in is
significantly more substantial than an individual contributor, and so (rightly
so) is the investment to return. It's an interesting paradox. Reputation
matters.

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nolite
how'd they make this flowchart? Its great

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jgh
take their money and buy a ferrari

