Continuing with my theme of quick tips for the startup entrepreneur pitching his/her startup to venture capitalists, I’d like to offer this relatively worthless tidbit:
VC Pitch Tip #2 – You won’t be eating much lunch during that “lunch” meeting
A lunch meeting with a VC isn’t really a lunch meeting for you, because you’ll be the one talking. Remember, you are meeting the venture capitalist to pitch your business. That means you’ll be presenting and answering questions while the VCs stuff food down their throats. There will be food available for you to eat, but there will not be time for you to eat it. If you have low blood sugar or get distracted when hungry I’d suggest you grab a bite to eat before your lunch meeting with the VC.
VCs don’t schedule these meetings to torture entrepreneurs, but sometimes it feels like that is the case, with the entrepreneurs staring forlornly at their plates while frantically working their way through the PowerPoint slides… the only chance to grab a quick bite when a self-important VC launches into a long-winded diatribe about the importance of technology differentiation and something about a “China Strategy.”
The other tip related to this one is that you probably want to pick the food that is the easiest to chew. You never know when that VC will finish up the useless “China Strategy” point and leave you with just a second to chew, swallow, clear your throat and come up with some sort of competent sounding response to the asinine question.
(The intent of these tips is to help the entrepreneur with little things that can be done to make the actually meeting with a venture capitalist go a bit smoother. None of these tips will directly cause you to raise capital, but may make the actual pitch go more smoothly.)
November 18th, 2008 at 1:33 am
Mark,
Ha, fun question. I'd be surprised if the VC didn't sincerely offer to pick up the tab. I'd feel bad making a starving entrepreneur buy me lunch! The only exception I can think of now would be if the meeting was in the startups office and sandwiches or something were brought in.
Healy
November 18th, 2008 at 9:34 am
A wise senior partner in our firm once told me never to eat shrimp at a cocktail party because cocktail sauce will end up on your tie. A correlative of this rule is don't eat anything complicated or involving onions at a meeting.