If you think it's hard being an entrepreneur trying to raise money from a venture capitalist, consider the challenges facing the VC. It's typical for a VC to meet with between 500 and 1,000 entrepreneurs a year and invest in two or three companies at most. That means investors -- who may take about 60 minutes with each entrepreneur -- meet with a lot of people whose companies they never fund.
But just because you have someone's attention for an hour, doesn't mean the pitch is going well. In the pitches I have listened to over the last 15 years, I've shared the tension VCs feel when they want to shut down the conversation after a few minutes but feel obliged, out of politeness, to stay silent. Within the first three minutes of meeting an entrepreneur, a VC decides whether the next 57 minutes are going to be excruciating or whether he will want to spend four more hours with the entrepreneur.
