A few years ago, I was at Techcrunch Disrupt and this guy taps me on the shoulder as I was chatting in a group.
He simply extended a handshake and said:
“Hi, sorry to interrupt. My name is Alan. My company is Bread and we make ad creative super easy. I’m sending you an e-mail with early access to the application because I see that you’re busy with this group, but I just wanted you to match the name and the face. Thanks.”
And that was it. He walked off. When I next checked my e-mail, there it was, an e-mail from Alan giving me early access to the product. I had plenty of time to ask questions and test it all out.
What Alan recognized was that most IRL forums and networking events are absolutely awful places to pitch and here’s why:
1) When a VC shows up in person, they’re looking to replicate the kind of top of the funnel they would get in an hour or two’s worth of e-mail, and that’s not going to happen if you corral them into a corner for 30 minutes. They want to show up, shake hands, take names, and generally touch base with as many people as possible to fill their top of funnel and remind people that their checkbook exists. They’re looking to spend only a precious few seconds with each person, forcing you to rush your pitch.
2) They have no ability to actually do any work in the moment. You’re telling them X, Y, and Z about an industry and they can’t look you up on LinkedIn to see if you’re the right person to have a perspective on such things. So much of a VC’s work behind the scenes of their inbox is trying to figure out if this person is for real and you’re only giving them the pitch to vet. They can’t look around and see if anyone seems to be doing it. They can’t try your product. Bottom line is that they’re going to need to do more work anyway and ask you to follow up—so why push a firehose of information at them now?
3) What do you get IRL that you don’t get over e-mail is a human connection—so why are you reciting your opening pitch e-mail word for word like a robot? No matter how good the pitch is, the fact that you decided to break it out like it was written on an index card without actually interacting with me like a person comes off so cold and transactional. You’re thinking it’s a positive that you got out from being the e-mail. However, it’s actually worse than an e-mail—especially post-pandemic when the VC is probably still just happy to be out and about with actual humans and you’re raining on the human parade with memorized pitching.
So what do you do instead to create a better IRL impression?
Here are a few tips:
1) First off, be a good community participant. Make sure you’re welcoming others into the conversation—a conversation that others can actually participate in. The best impression you can make is to be empathetic enough to realize that you’re not the only person at this event and that if you stand in front of a VC trying to get all of their attention, you’re literally standing in front of others.
2) Try to get to know the VC landscape ahead of time. In many situations that you might meet a VC, you know who’s going to be at this event, so do your homework. Asking a good question specific to the VC leaves a good impression—especially one that’s not generic like, “What are you seeing?” or asking a generalist, “What areas are you interested in?” That just leaves the door open to name an industry that isn’t yours. Why would you do that? Instead, ask a question specific to their approach to investing—something simple enough like what’s going on at their stage. This way, you get more information about the market, but it shows that you know that they’re pre-seed and not Series A.
3) Like in the example I started off with, just share a quick one line and let me know you’ll be following up. Don’t ask me for my e-mail because it’s right on my website. Also, who can’t guess a VC’s e-mail? If you can’t do that, you’re probably going to find starting up a $100mm annual revenue very difficult. The best one liner to leave isn’t, “We’re changing the world as you know it” because that just sounds ridiculous. Tell me something I don’t know that is going to stick with me, like that Pizza Hut was the largest purchaser of kale in the United States at one time—because that’s what they used to decorate their salad bars with. You can follow up with an e-mail subject like, “Kale, Pizza Hut and my Pitch” and then I’m going to know exactly who you are and will be curious to hear more and hopefully learn more random facts.
4) Don’t push for me to say yes or no right then—because I see 2000 things in a year and do 8-10 of them. Statistically, I’m usually a no—so what you’re most likely going to do is just kill the conversation and make it awkward. Once I’ve established that I’m not investing, there’s no reason to keep talking to me—I’m just not that interesting of a person and you’ve got fundraising to do. Why ruin our respective good time out with other humans. Just use IRL to fill your top of funnel as well and signal that you, too, are also a human that enjoys other real life human connection. We can debate your startup over e-mail and Zoom later.
5) Lastly, don’t flatter a VC. At worse, it comes off as disingenuous and even at best, it’s a little awkward. I hope that everything that you’re working on or reading by professional authors is far far more interesting than whatever I write in my blog/newsletter—so unless I wrote something that really is specific to you and your situation that was uniquely meaningful for you, I’d rather talk about anything else than my newsletter, to be honest. If you want to thank me for the content being generally helpful, that’s very nice, thank you—but just keep it super short and move on to other stuff.
6) Break in. Don’t hog the conversation, but don’t just let everyone else crowd you out. If you’re just lingering for an hour while other people just talk to me and then you try and grab me while I’m walking out the door, you’re basically saying you don’t know how to carve out room for yourself—which is literally what you’ll be doing everyday for your company. Stand your ground and speak up for yourself. Projecting your voice, firm handshake (or whatever pandemic thing you want to replace it with), and something short and to the point with a promise to follow up will make a solid impression, while being a wallflower will not.
And if you want to know where and when I might be showing up to things, follow my weekly NYC innovation community events e-mail here.
