When it comes to giving robots a "sense of touch", you may want to check out Bota Systems (botasys.com) – already deployed in hundreds of research and industrial robots globally.
I get more of a Sega Nomad vibe from it -- take the games you can play at home with you on the go, and you can even play them on a big TV (or monitor, in this case) when you travel, but the portable experience will have some notable caveats in terms of ergonomics, heat, weight, and battery life.
Hi graycat, I'm the author of the guide. You refer to a number of issues, I'll try to reply to some of them:
- 'Fast' progress, i.e. weeks (I mentioned a couple months as your target): If a deal is hot, things can happen even faster. If you don't have progress within such timeframe, chances are the round is not moving forward at all.
- 'Full time job', 100+ meetings, months of time: If you take a closer lok, we are not necessarily in disagreement with this.
- Requests from the founder: This guide does not describe what we 'ask' from the founders of our portfolio companies, but addresses a much broader audience. Indicatively, we make intros to ~30 relevant VCs in each case and book initial meetings/calls, then the founders take over.
- I agree that advice varies on the internet with regards to what makes a good pitch deck. It is also subjective at some extent. I provided a very high level guidance (and definitely did not request a blockbuster movie production)... At the same time, the deck is what will help you make it through the first stages of the funnel; its importance should be straightforward.
- Re traction requests: VC requirements and the definition of a Series A round may vary per geography, industry or firm (or even per case); what I'm trying to stress here is that such reqs differ compared to a Seed round (i.e. "we want to build this" vs. "here is something that works and we want to go faster")
I hope the above clarify things further. Thanks for your comment!
> If you raised a Seed round, sooner or
later you’ll be fund raising – again.
This statement is very eager just to
assume that each successful information
technology (IT) startup will, naturally,
of course, be doing round after round of
equity funding.
I've been to enough yacht clubs to see a
lot of people who have done really well in
business but never accepted an equity
check.
Yes, there is the view that a startup is
necessarily some solid fueled rocket on a
10 G acceleration into orbit or bust, but
that situation is rare in business. The
last one was, what, Facebook? I'm
reluctant to count AirBnB or Uber due to
the risk of their being regulated out of
business.
> sooner or later you’ll be fund raising –
again.
Hopefully not and maybe not: For some
really good projects, e.g., Plenty of
Fish, maybe won't need the funds. For a
business that grew to pre-tax earnings of
$20 million a year, maybe the growth is
then too slow to attract VCs. Or maybe
the business is about to fail.
Or, "sooner or later you will" see a
dentist but not necessarily a VC.
> A core part of a CEO’s job is to secure
the resources for your team to execute the
company’s mission.
But for a startup with the traction that
it appears is coveted by VCs for a Series
A, those "resources" might be available
from the seed round or organically, that
is, from current revenue.
> You should expect that you will be
spending a significant part of your time
on fund raising-related issues going
forward.
Hopefully, maybe not: Maybe there are
plenty of funds from the seed round or
current revenue.
> At the same time, being successful in
fund raising is a big part of building a
successful company – there is no shortcut
or workaround, and this is not time
wasted.
There is a "workaround": have a startup
that doesn't need equity funding.
> Fund raising is about being religious in
doing the small things right; as long as
you establish a discipline about it,
things become straightforward.
On the one hand, it is commonly accepted
that running a new business is running at
full speed all the time, putting low
priority work on the back burner or the
trash and doing the most important things
ASAP.
In that situation, there's not a lot of
opportunity to be:
"religious in doing the small things
right".
That perfectionistic work approach may
have been crucial for some of the tricky
core code of the startup. But for
candidate investors to ask the founder of
a promising IT startup far enough along to
get a Series A to be so perfectionistic
is, as I wrote, "asking too much".
For
> i) Deck – This should include some
context about the problem (why it’s big),
your approach (why it’s unique), your team
(why you’re the ones), early validation
(how it’s winning), next steps (where
you’ll be in a year or two) and grand
vision (your version of the world). It
should be easy to read and appealing
enough to get you a meeting.
If the only goal is a meeting, okay, do
whatever gets the meeting and leave
everything else important for later.
But some VCs don't like superficial decks
just as a teaser to get a meeting and want
enough to know to write a check or at
least to get quite serious. Maybe when
they say that they really are looking for
educational materials to contribute to
their "deep domain knowledge", but maybe
they are serious and don't want a deck
that is just superficial and raised
questions instead of answering them.
I can believe that for a Series A a large
fraction of VCs will need just the name of
the startup so that they can try the
product or service. Or, "don't TELL me;
SHOW me", and with that common advice a
pitch deck is not very promising.
But I was struck by the
"your approach (why it’s unique)"
sounds superficial. E.g., "unique"
doesn't mean much. My view is that the
"approach" is likely -- now needs to be --
the crucial core of the business, its
ability to please the customers/users, to
be difficult to duplicate or equal, and to
provide a Buffett moat barrier to entry.
So the "approach" needs a lot of
attention; it might need a 50 page paper
of original applied math and an NDA. So,
okay, can't have the 50 pages or get an
NDA in the first foil deck, but
"your approach (why it’s unique)"
still sounds superficial or, worse, that
the VCs are not used to really serious
work on "approach".
Or, I have this terrific idea for a
startup: An airline that flies NY to
Sidney at Mach 15 for $100 per passenger.
The market is huge. The idea is "unique".
Only problem: How to make money at only
$100 a person and, really, how the heck to
fly from NY to Sidney at Mach 15 at all.
Or, it's easy to come up with fantastic
ideas if we don't take fully seriously the
"approach".
> A budget for the next couple years
How about, we have some cash in the bank,
enough for a rainy day, week, month, or
quarter (IIRC early on Gates wanted enough
such cash for a year of zero revenue), and
otherwise we spend money depending on
current revenue and slowly enough not to
dip into that cash. So, we don't really
have a budget and instead have a
dynamic, feedback control for the
uncertain future. Or, since our rapidly
growing startup is facing unexpected
problems weekly or so, we don't know the
revenue or unexpected expenses and, thus,
can't fix a budget. Or, such a budget
would be like asking a football
quarterback to call all 4 plays on first
and 10. Instead he calls the second down
play after seeing the results of the first
down play.
Or, my Ph.D. dissertation was in
stochastic optimal control, best decision
making over time under uncertainty. There
it was more solid than granite clad in
cast iron and Kryptonite that fixed plans
in the face of an uncertain future
commonly are very poor controls.
Sure, the founder knows his on-going
monthly expenses and his revenue in recent
months and the growth in revenue but,
still, he may not have such a budget, may
never have bothered to develop one.
Really, that budget sounds like a lot to
ask of a very busy founder and not much
help for the VC. Or, what founder wants
to report to a BoD with VCs who would take
such a budget seriously?
> List – A list of all investors you want
to go after, to be used in a fashion
similar to a CRM (i.e., track progress
across the pipeline, etc.); these are
either leads you’ve been in touch with, or
new ones you and your partners will be
reaching out to.
From all I've seen, commonly VCs take
great pride in being really difficult to
get to respond at all. E.g., a "cold
contact" can be treated as contemptible
"over the transom" with some scatological
implications. Or a founder who sends a
deck to INFO@VCxyz.COM, if the deck is
noticed at all, puts the founder on the
dunce list. That is, the e-mail address
INFO@VCxyz.COM is a honey pot for fools.
Sure, for the list, go to the National
Venture Capital Association (NVCA) and get
a copy of their membership list. Presto.
Bingo. Done. But to what end?
> make sure that everything is top-notch
So, we're back into this perfectionism
stuff. Commonly "top-notch" is not so
much good work as a sign of the anxiety
disease OCD. My wife was really good at
doing "top-notch": Valedictorian, Summa
cum Laude, Woodrow Wilson fellow, NSF
fellow (two years support in one award),
PBK, top research university from world
famous professors Ph.D. It was fatal:
She never recovered, and missing her body
was found floating in a lake. I have a
good pure/applied math Ph.D. from a world
class research university and, thus, know
what "top-notch" work really is; I doubt
that many VCs do know.
> Do the pitch to 3-4 friendly VCs that
are not top of your list to make sure your
narrative is clear and well-received, or
fix any weak points that may occur (if the
reception is not enthusiastic, you need to
take a step back and iterate until it
becomes such).
Where does a startup founder find "3-4
friendly VCs" when sending 100 copies of
the pitch deck may result in 0-2
responses?
For the "fix any weak points that may
occur if the reception is not
enthusiastic", that's asking that VCs be
"enthusiastic", and that was the source of
my parody that the desire is a pitch deck
like a summer blockbuster popcorn movie.
I'm not sure even Spielberg and Lucas
could develop a deck that would get VCs
"enthusiastic".
That's enough.
From such considerations I repeated the
common advice that a startup that might
want a Series A might just f'get about
VCs, concentrate on growing the business,
and let VCs discover the company and show
their interest by contacting the founder.
E.g., some months ago at AVC.COM Fred
Wilson told the story of a startup his
firm USV pursued for some months and
finally talked the founder into accepting
a USV equity check.
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