One thing I’ve noticed about the startup funding eco-system is that everybody is out to get your money. Unfortunately, that means that you get both people with the good ideas and people with the not-so-good ideas. And it always seems that the people with the not-so-good ideas outpace the people with good ideas by a factor of 100 or more.
A while back I stopped going to the Tech Meetups and entrepreneur gatherings because whenever I handed out my business card and people notice the word “Ventures” in my company name, the emails don’t stop. I get pitched by everyone. I even got pitched the other day on Facebook. At some point, I may need to remove my business name from Facebook!
It’s too much. The deluge of emails coming in is too much to deal with. I hear it’s the same at venture funds; they too are getting too many pitches and are trying to make sense of it all while not losing the opportunity to find that next big thing amongst all the not-so-good things.
Over this last year, I’ve pretty much switched to the referral model. It means that I never go to tech gatherings but only field introductions from people I know. It’s slowed the pace of pitches considerably while filtering them in a much better way. After all, somebody you know isn’t going to send crap your way; you have a personal stake in that referral being worthwhile and not a waste of time and don’t want to jeopardize the relationship. If an entrepreneur is able to convince someone else that they’re good/cool/savvy enough to be intro-ed to me, then I’d love to talk to them.
The same goes with venture funds. As I’ve gone out there and networked with them, I’m finding that we angels can play a great role in filtering for them as well. We can be a great first line of defense for them, sending only those that we feel good about to them and doing some of the leg work in finding hidden deals through our networks, which are often hidden and hard for outsiders to break into. I’ve also gotten referrals from venture funds on deals that were too small for them to handle, and also those that I’ve helped them check out. It works really well in both directions.
As the venture fund world evolves, I can see the relationship between venture funds and angels is going to grow tighter and more useful for both parties over time.