Tips on pitching to Venture Capitalists
Before presenting, please take a moment to review a few resources for understanding what goes into a great startup pitch:
Sequoia Capital Ideas and Formats
Guy Kawasaki’s References-Building a Company
Inc. Magazine Elements of a Winning Pitch
Steve Blank’s Customer Development blog (see VC section)
Lean Startup Concepts
Steve Blank’s (A Haas visiting lecturer) Four Steps to the Epiphany details Blank’s customer development concept. Excellent book for any entrepreneur that wants to find market/product fit at minimal costs; Blank’s blog amplifies the ideas in his book
Eric Ries further examines lean startup principles in his blog. He discusses issues such as minimum viable produdct (MVP), when and how to release your first product, the use of Toyota-style “five whys,” and continuous deployment
Marc Andreessen article on product-market fit.
Getting to Plan B by John Mullins and Randy Komisar explains how entrepreneurs should pivot.
Building and analyzing Business Models
David Skok of Matrix Partners presentation on the SaaS business model.
Steve Carpenter’s TechCrunch teardown of generic web business models and key metrics for each.
Product Management
Marty Cagan of Silicon Valley Product Group’s Inspired is a comprehensive guide to the product manager role
Geoffrey Moore’s classic books Crossing the Chasm and Inside the Tornado
Rob Go of NextView Ventures had compiled a series of interviews with senior product managers
David Barrett, founder/CEO of Expensify, on “Why products suck” and how to improve them
Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures on challenges in product and engineering as startups scale
Recruiting/Organizational Issues
Vinicius Vacanti, co-founder of Yipit, on how to find a technical co-founder and if you can’t, whether to hire a programmer or to teach yourself to build a prototype
Hacker News thread on whether a non-technical founder should teach him/herself to code
Miriam Naficy, founder of Minted.com on how to hire a startup CTO
Angel investor Chris Dixon summarizes ideas from software guru Joel Spolsky about how to hire programmers
Ken Norton on how to hire a product manager
Charlie O’Donnell of First Round Capital on reasons for hiring a design lead before a CTO or technical co-founder
Mark Suster of GRP Partners on hiring salespeople
Off course, there are many more resources that could prove helpful, Most of the resources here have been adopted from Tom Eisemen’s blog post – Launching Ventures part iv . please contact for us if you are interested in learning more.