One of my most used lines in my diction is: “Your mileage may vary.”
Maybe because of what I’ve written historically about. Maybe ’cause of my previous life in investor relations. Or maybe, it’s because of the interesting node I sit at in the venture ecosystem. I often get asked by GPs and founders alike for fundraising advice. Now before you come to any conclusions, I don’t have a silver bullet. I’m not even sure if my advice when it comes to fundraising is any good. While I’m lucky to have heard back from a number of people I’ve shared my thoughts with on the result of their fundraise after employing my “advice,” I’m still not completely sure how much of it was the fundraiser themselves and how much of it was the advice. And how much the color of the jersey matters.
And so when I share what I’ve seen or done, I always caveat with that first line. That said, what I think is more useful than any advice I could give pre-mortem is listening to the feedback of the market. The people you’re pitching to. When someone says no, why do they say no? When someone says yes, why do they say yes?
Inspired by a conversation I had the previous week at a summit, getting feedback from someone who passed is tough. Through the archives of fundraising, you’re more likely to get no’s than yes’s. And when you do, do you know why? Very rarely do you get much feedback. Investors (LPs and VCs) are either too busy or have too much to go through to give feedback as intimately as you probably like. And so I’ve always found it useful to make it easy for people to give feedback. Naturally, it’s never guaranteed you’ll get a response, but usually, the below question I like to ask reaches less deaf ears than “Can you give me feedback?”
I know you’re busy, and you simply don’t have the time to give every pass a share of feedback. But if I could ask for 30 seconds of your time (no more than that), which number slide on my deck did you most notice (good or bad)?
Or… was there a particular slide in my deck that piqued your interest the most that led you to schedule our initial meeting?
The goal of this question is to triangulate attention and mindshare. When you get the answer, then you can come to your own (hopefully intellectually honest) conclusion about whether the message shared on that slide is strong or weak. Controversial or not.
Moreover, you’re not overstaying your welcome. The advice and feedback you’re asking for in pointed and doesn’t consume a lot of time for the other party to answer (yet will feel to them as if they’re doing you a favor and/or being helpful).
Only once you know why people say no can you actually iterate on the pitch. Of course, there are many different ways to ask for feedback, and… your mileage may vary. Usual fundraising advice gets you through the first 10 pitch meetings. After that, you need to course-correct based on the feedback you get back.
One thing I will note is that in the age of agentic venture firms and tools that can be built within hours that cover every stretch of the imagination. One thing an LP told me that a GP told them was that some founders are getting smart. Preparing two decks for investors: one for the human eye, the other for the agentic audience. The latter with more appendices than the former. I imagine that it’s only a matter of time before VCs do the same to LPs as LPs are building agentic deck readers. In that sense, asking for deck feedback may not hold as much weight as it used to. Who knows?
Nevertheless, if there’s one takeaway from this blogpost, it’s that if you want help, if you want feedback, make it specific, low friction, and direct.
The DGQ series is a series dedicated to my process of question discovery and execution. When curiosity is the why, DGQ is the how. It’s an inside scoop of what goes on in my noggin’. My hope is that it offers some illumination to you, my readers, so you can tackle the world and build relationships with my best tools at your disposal. It also happens to stand for damn good questions, or dumb and garbled questions. I’ll let you decide which it falls under.
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The views expressed on this blogpost are for informational purposes only. None of the views expressed herein constitute legal, investment, business, or tax advice. Any allusions or references to funds or companies are for illustrative purposes only, and should not be relied upon as investment recommendations. Consult a professional investment advisor prior to making any investment decisions.