Host Pablo Srugo and 3x founder Lee Silverstone discuss optimal warm introduction sources when pitching venture capital firms.
Opinion
Silverstone: Letters of intent generally carry very little weight
“Letters of intent, I think, generally speaking, don't carry a lot of weight, in my opinion. I'm sure some people disagree with me, but I don't think they do. But we then made them even less valuable, because we got people to sign them under the worst pretenses…”
Insight
Silverstone: Startups discover value better without external stakeholders early on
“The longer startups can stay experiments without these external stakeholders and their only stakeholders are the people on the team. And then the customer, the better you can run experiments and the better you can actually find value.”
Opinion
Silverstone: Peloton and Mirror do not need proprietary hardware, just iPads
“Peloton mirror, like all of these ones that are like, you need the hardware to build the future. It's like, actually, no, you don't. You just need an iPad with software on it. It's the same thing.”
Insight
Silverstone: Courting mainstream media over trade press signals broader organizational failure
“I think it's a, Symptom of a broader issue within a company to spend time talking to reporters that are not industry specific reporters that are going to get you more customers. It's a symptom of broader failures in the organization.”
Insight
Silverstone: Never pitch a VC as a casual conversation without a deck
“Go in, have a deck ready, present the deck, walk the person through it, control the conversation. This is a pitch. This is the, oh, let's just have a conversation is like, yeah, that I terrible. Never do that.”
Insight
Silverstone: Early products that must do everything to deliver value fail
“That, like, lesson of, like, the everything comment, I think it's, like, one of the scariest things I've, like, you'll ever hear at a startup is, like,
Well, this product would be cool if it did everything.
Right.
And it's like, it won't be good until it do…”