EightBlack.

Now this is more like it.

Title of the session “Starting Up 2.0: Strategies for Pitching, Financing & Growing Your Web 2.0 Startup” presented by Jeff Clavier and Rob Hayes, 2 independent VC’s (Venture Capitalists)

Jeff, as you can probably guess by his surname, is a frenchman. Obviously decided that living in “the valley” as they all refer to it now, was far more interesting than living in France, which as far as I can tell, is a country you drive through to get to Spain.

This was more of a conversation with 100 people, with them as the facilitators. Questions galore. They were clear though about not wanting to hear 100 different business cases and their specialty is Angel investing or early seed captial. Up to US$1 million.

These guys are the eternal deal makers. They display little emotion around the deal itself but have a passion for their industry and know the game well.

Their observation of the current environment is that it’s a sellers market. There is more VC money now than there has ever been and for those who are a little nervous pitching an idea, wondering if you’ll be laughed at, just jump on a plane and start walking around San Francisco, find the nearest Starbucks, wait 5 minutes and boom, you’ll over hear a pitch to a VC. Sure as eggs.

It was interesting to hear that Angel investors couldn’t give a rats toss about your business plan. They stick to the one pager. It’s the same format Macquarie Bank use to evaluate deals. If you want to see a sample of this, email me (eightblack AT gmail DOT com)

I got a lot out of this session. Most importantly, their personal email addresses and their mobile numbers.

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This entry was posted on Monday, April 16th, 2007 at 11:01 pm and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.