For entrepreneurs seeking venture capital, the pitch is everything.
Most investments in a start-up company, from the smallest “seed”
financing that may be based on little more than an idea for a start-up,
to a $50 million round for a profitable company preparing to go public,
is preceded by an entrepreneur standing in a room explaining why venture
capitalists should part with their money.
We asked Brian Jacobs, general partner with Emergence Capital Partners,
a San Mateo, Calif.-based technology investor that is investing out of a
$200 million fund raised in 2007, to take us behind the scenes of a
typical company pitch and explain what goes through the mind of an
investor as he’s watching and listening.
The slides below are a selection from an actual presentation made by Emergence Capital portfolio company InsideView
Inc., a San Francisco-based company selling software that helps
salespeople find new clients, improve existing relationships and close
deals. The information is customized for each user and is provided
through a Web-crawling search engine that finds and filters potentially
important sales leads and information from in new social media sites and
other emerging data sources. The presentation was shown to new
investors, but eventually the company chose to accept the insiders’
investment proposal which resulted in an $11.5 million insider Series B financing
in April from Emergence Capital, Rembrandt Venture Partners and
Greenhouse Capital Partners. The company has now raised more than $25
million.