Do More Faster India, 2nd Edition

Chapter 64Show, Don’t Tell

Brad Feld

Brad is a partner at Foundry Group and one of the cofounders of Techstars.

I get emails every day from entrepreneurs either raising money or telling me about their new idea and asking for feedback. The conventional wisdom is that VCs rarely invest in things that reach them randomly (or over the transom, in someone’s VC vocabulary—I can’t for the life of me figure out why that phrase hangs around). However, this isn’t the case for Foundry Group, as a number of the companies we’ve funded were from cold call emails. I’m very happy to get a steady stream of random emails from people looking for money or sharing their ideas—keep them coming!

I’ve noticed a trend recently toward more video presentations and I’m reminded of the old writer’s adage “Show, don’t tell.” This advice applies nicely to every pitch you ever do. Specifically, I don’t want to hear you describe what you are going to do; I want to see it. If you haven’t built it yet, show me an example. It’s always better to point me at a URL, even if it’s a very rough prototype, as I can usually get a much quicker view of what you are doing by simply playing around than by reading about it in an email.

One video I watched recently was a two-minute segment of the entrepreneur looking into the camera and describing his business idea. The idea was fine, although I could tell within 15 seconds that it wasn’t something we’d invest in given the market he was going after. I ended up watching the ...