The odds say that 10 of those companies will go under

[zihadhasan019]

8 will have much more modest outcomes and 1-2 will return the lion's share. Thus, big fund VCs are going to be seeking portfolio investments that address multi-billion dollar markets and have a shot at that massive IPO/acquisition. A smart entrepreneur would look at this ahead of time and specifically chase venture capital firms with small-moderate fund sizes. Unfortunately, we didn't plan ahead intelligently on this, and thus talked to many folks with funds between $100-500million.


At those levels, it's the 1/20 or 1/50 billion russia email list dollar+ exits that bring all the returns for the VC. They're not seeking a reasonable bet on a company that has an long-shot, outside chance at a $500 million exit. They want 20 or 30 companies with 1 in 20 or 1 in 30 chances to go all the way to that billion dollar acquisition or IPO. Our introductions came streaming in very unstrategically. I met with lots of entreprenuers and people in the tech community, who put me in touch, usually via an email introduction, to a partner at a firm.




We'd exchange a couple emails to set up a time to talk, chat for 15-45 minutes (sometimes longer) and then schedule an in-person meeting for the next time I was in their area. Those introductions didn't come all at once - in the first 30 days of actively pursuing introductions, I had ~10 calls. Then, over the next 40 days, more and more introductions would roll in from people I'd connected with in the past couple months, and those would turn into calls and meetings.