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How to Give a VC a Hard-On [video]

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Re: How to Give a VC a Hard-On [video]

#21
post #10

how about not playing prostitute to a VC - most dont have balls anyways.

I agree it's generally best to not "play prostitute" to most anyone.

However, regarding "balls": I think VCs are in the "balls business". It is a hard/risky way of making money. (Personally, this is why I'm always looking for reasons to say "no", versus why to say "yes"... I'm looking to be compelled.)

Something to consider:

Entrepreneurs have their one horse. VCs have their stable of horses.

So, one view is: VCs don't "have balls" because they don't commit. Whereas the entrepreneurs are "all in". In this view point, the "balls award" goes to the entrepreneur because they're the ones taking the all the risk.

But: the VCs aren't in complete control of their destiny. They may be backing many horses, but they're not ever truly riding one. For highly capable and smart people this also takes large balls. You have less risk per venture but not necessarily across all your ventures.

Side-note:

The point Dave is trying to make with his presentation is how to communicate in such a way as to get above the radar while trying to keep the VCs attention (meaning, they've stopped thinking about all the reasons to say "no" and moved to "maybes"... )

Dave is good at this - look at his presentations compared to others. Generally people don't talk about VCs and raising capital this way :)

Re: How to Give a VC a Hard-On [video]

#22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

YouTube was "flickr for video", which turned out to be gross understatement of the community potential. Even in good cases, they are horrible analogies.

note: you're not trying to be perfectly accurate, and or flowery. you're trying to communicate plainly, and to keep their attention long enough to get to the next slide / next pitch. thus, sometimes taking a shortcut is imperfect, but useful. note: "X for Y" does NOT work very well if neither X nor Y are well understood for the audience. however, it can work ok as shorthand while the person "peels the onion" and gets…

The best thing about "X for Y" is that it is 3 words long. If there is a more descriptive 3 or 4 word phrase, use it. Tipjoy could have been "Digg with Cash" but both "Makes micropayments work" and "Simple, social payments" are more descriptive.
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