Mike Maples, Jr has a great slide deck up titled Inside the Black Box of Venture Capital. Over the course of 77 slides he shares a number of excellent ideas. After reading through it, seven takeaways stood out to me:
- Only 3% of VC Partners generate >3x in their careers
- VCs are paid to take high risk for high return. It’s the only reason LPs invest in VCs.
- The best company in a given year will usually be more valuable than all other 9,999 companies combined
- VCs have very little incentive to tell you exactly what they are thinking
- There is only one good answer to “who else are you talking to…” – “The usual suspects.”
- How much traction do you have? Ideally 30% a month growth in an important area (sales, revenue, users)
- Schedule all of your meetings in a single week 3 weeks out into the future if you can; 2 weeks of meetings is OK, but close to the limit
Interested in venture capital? Interested in raising money from VCs? Go read Inside the Black Box of Venture Capital.
What else? What are some more takeaways from Inside the Black Box of Venture Capital?
David Cummings on Startups 