Virtual Fundraising

A number of the entrepreneurs I work with are in the middle of fundraising during this crazy pandemic. It’s unclear when we’ll ever be able to meet in person again, let alone travel to venture fund offices for live pitches. Therefore, most are pitching virtually via Zoom or other mediums. A common theme throughout their process has been the lack of face time with potential investors. Investors are expressing it’s hard to write a term sheet or know what it’s like to work with someone they’ve never met in person. It’s reasonable to think that an entrepreneur can accept that they’ll have to wait to meet the investor in person once it’s safe to move about the country again; they need liquidity and are quite used to making sacrifices to forge ahead. However, investors are less desperate and it increasingly unclear if the “I can’t write you a term sheet if I never met you in person” is valid or just another excuse to bow out of a deal.

This got me to thinking about the perspective of each in these times:

The In-Person Pitch

Consider what an entrepreneur worries about when fundraising in person:

• Travel logistics: In addition to the cost of a flight and hotel expenses, if I can’t crash on a friend’s couch, I’ll be in SF for 48 hours and have to lock in meetings along Sandhill Road, ideally, back to back and with enough gaps to get from one to the next. OR…. Should I take the subway and risk ruining my professional look if there’s no AC or rack up ride-share fees that my startup just can’t afford right now?
• I’m on their turf: Not knowing what to expect in the conference room, AV, who’ll be there and how they’ll perceive me as I am escorted through the office. Who’s watching, what physical attributes are they looking for, etc.
• Who attends: We can’t swing all co-founders on the road financially or being out of the office for full days to pitch or for diligence. We have to keep the business moving!

There is certainly upside for entrepreneurs to get in-person face time with their future investors, but there’s not much downside for the investor to do in-person meetings.

Virtual Pitches

Alternatively, the opportunities virtual pitches present to entrepreneurs include:

• Schedule flexibility — Let me know what works for you! No travel necessary.
• Cost savings — No flights, hotels or ride-share fees. No hit to the bottom line!
• My turf — I’m in my personal space, representing who I am and feeling comfortable in my own chair. No one is scanning how I walk or what I’m wearing. I am authentically me!
• My team — Need to chat with my CTO? She can jump on a video call whenever you’re free. Want to walk through our financials? My finance leader is happy to screen share our pro-forma to review with you.

From an investor perspective, one could imagine that the schedule logistics are the biggest plus for virtual pitches. But there are also some clear potential downsides of virtual pitches for both parties — many related to basic remote work challenges highlighted here, but I’ll call out a few:

• Attention span — will both parties be fully engaged or distracted by other screen activity? (although I have seen many VCs looking a their laptops/cell phones more than engaging with entrepreneurs in a boardroom pitching right in front of them)
• Eye contact — it’s hard enough to make eye contact in person let alone tracking gaze awareness and looking for social cues. There is no opportunity to catch a side glance or reaction from one party to the other. The post-meeting debrief won’t include observations like “did you notice when we shared our financial projections that they all looked at each other like ‘WOW’?” or when two partners notice body language between co-founders that suggest they may not be aligned on the company’s go-to-market strategy.
• Cognitive load — not only does constantly looking at yourself while you are presenting create a lot of emotional pressure, but trying hard to track all of the social cues in 2D can be exhausting for all parties and could cloud the focus of the discussion.
• Informal connections — the post-meeting socializing one often experiences is completely lost. The casual walk out of the conference room, chat at the coffee area or even the bio break that may lead an entrepreneur and investor to be washing their hands at the same time. Each of those situations are opportunities to form informal connections that don’t happen in the boardroom. You find out you have kids the same age or that you both like the same brand of lipstick. Your college roommate is in their soccer league or you both prefer oat milk over soy milk. While these are minor details, they make these connections more personal and build trust in what may become an important working relationship.

Optimizing For Our Current Normal

We won’t likely be going back into boardrooms for pitches any time soon, so herewith some suggestions to ensure the virtual-only rounds have a better chance of success:

• Turn off your self-view and expand your screen to just video so you are fully engaged. Put aside your phone and resist texting with your co-founder/partners during the call. You wouldn’t do that in the boardroom (would you?!), so don’t do it on video.
• For both sides, focus on facial reactions and body language (like leaning back or arm folding). Pause when you think “I really want to text my colleague to get their reaction to what’s going on right now” and consider how to incorporate that into the conversation. For entrepreneurs, this may be saying “Pat, I noticed you looked surprised when I mentioned we have large traction with such a unique audience. Would you like me to explain that further?” Or, “Sam, you seemed taken aback when we shared our unit economics. I have a backup slide with more detail if you’d like to dig into it.”. For Investors, it could be “Tyler, I noticed a long pause when I asked you about your engineering team. I am happy to discuss that further after this call if it’s a longer conversation or you’d like your CTO to be part of the discussion.” [Note: All of these examples could happen in person too, but may be done with more intention when on a video call.]
• If the pitch is an hour or less, consider tacking on 10–15 minutes post-meeting to allow for more informal conversations. If it’s a longer, diligence or full partner meeting, consider scheduling a mid-point break for the entrepreneur to do a breakout with partners/team members they haven’t met yet. Or schedule these less formal chats as short meetings that follow the main event. Be explicit that these are more personal connections (“tell me more about YOU”) and not for deeper business dives. Yes, it’s more time on the calendar, but that’s the time the entrepreneur may have used to travel to your office or that you used to drive to the office or walk from your office to the board room.
• Create opportunities for reference checking — Investors, make intros to other entrepreneurs in your portfolio who can share what it’s been like to work with your team after the money was wired. Entrepreneurs, make intros to customers, angel investors, mentors or others who can speak to who you are beyond your business. [NOTE: It’s no secret that backchannel references will happen on both sides, regardless, but being proactive about this is always a good thing!]
• For entrepreneurs with physical products vs. software that’s easy to demo online, send prototypes or latest products in-market to investors in advance. Allow them to see and feel your product! You’d likely have brought it with you if you were in person, so why not send in advance? If you have limited supplies, ask the investor to send it back post-pitch. Any decent investor should be trustworthy enough to do that…on their dime…even if no term sheet comes of it.

Finally, investors, stop using lack of face time as a reason not to invest. Your investment theses are still valid whether you meet a founder in person or not and pattern matching can still happen on video. Trust your instincts and consider how incredible these humans are to be able to run and scale their businesses even during a pandemic with most if not all virtual teams. They are resilient and determined not to be thwarted by fully remote work environments. The strong survive and prosper, and so will you!

Do you have other tips to enhance the virtual pitch process for entrepreneurs and/or investors? Please add in the comments!