You have set up a meeting with VC, and now you wonder what’s next. How to prepare for a VC meeting and hold a professional presentation? The first thing you should keep in mind is a first impression matter. Therefore, you should keep multiple versions of your pick deck and have all the answers and questions prepared in advance.
When you’re new to fundraising, one of the hardest things to know is what you’re supposed to send to an investor, when, and if they will keep your information confidential. So another good question asked is what you should do if your VC is invested in a competitor? In the VC world, associates are tasked with outreach to see what’s going on in space. As a result, they perform competitive or just broad scale intelligence. That is because VC is about to buy something costly and wants to look at the competition better.
The important thing to bear in mind is if an investor or your competitor wants to find out something about your company, chances are they will. So, how to prepare for a VC meeting in this scenario? Generally speaking, you shouldn’t worry about this too much. However, you are also not obligated to take every meeting with investors. If that is your choice, come up with a short but effective answer, explaining how you are currently not rising money, or express your concern honestly about your competitor.
Another option is to take the meeting and do the best you can to impress your VC. It’s a competitive market. Sometimes, if the VC firm has over 60 companies in its portfolio, not every individual at the firm will know and understand who each portfolio company’s competitor is.
What should you send before the VC meeting?
There is a lot of discussion on this topic. The first question is, what happens if you don’t send it? You are most likely to lose the narrative. What happens if you do? Your VC may share this information with others, but that does not necessarily mean you should not send it. If well prepared, we believe a short “teaser” pitch deck should be sent.
It should give the reader a path to quickly and visually scan your materials and understand who you are and what you do, what makes you unique, the market potential, and what defensible IP you have built. The presentation should be visually appealing but straightforward. You can make it 8–12 pages, and the Title Page can say “YourCo Teaser Deck” or “YourCo Company Backgrounder”) so that it’s clear this isn’t your full pitch deck if you want.
You want to send just enough to set up the meeting (and, of course, a great deck sells better than a long email) and not so long that you don’t leave a chance to impress the person in your VC meeting.
If you are concerned about confidentiality, add to your pitch deck information you are happy to share with other people. It should not include any detail or secret ingredient that your competitor could take advantage of.
Although we cannot share an example due to confidentiality reasons, here are a couple of things you should include.
Current status: funds raised to date, monthly budget, revenue, team size, team expertise, customers, metrics. It should also include the problem you’re solving, market size and potential, what problem you are solving, competition, go to market strategy, unfair advantage, and the ask (how much you want to raise & why).
What to keep in mind during the meeting
So, how to prepare for a VC meeting? If you prepared a pitch deck and sent one in advance, before the meeting, VC will read your deck and come prepared. If your deck is up to 12 pages, it should have a word about your team, what is the market problem, how your solution will solve it, your progress to date and TAM (market sizing).
Your pitch deck for a meeting will be an extension of your teaser pitch deck. It should have a lengthy description of the market problem, and the unit economics of your solution. Generally speaking, it would be a deeper dive into your company, solution and your progress. You should prepare up to 25 pages in your pitch deck and be able to go through it within your meeting time – usually up to 45 minutes.
And remember, the goal of this presentation is not to show your slides but to have a two-way conversation with investors. This is the most important reason why you need a short meeting deck and separate slides with details.
Follow up after the VC Meeting
If your meeting went well, you should have a basic understanding of your next steps and action. Since you have presented them with the meeting pitch deck, the next step is to send a follow-up email with the attached meeting deck and recommend possible next steps.
If you felt like your meeting got engagement you might ask for a second meeting which could be just with that person or perhaps to meet one of his or her colleagues.
As you move up the fundraising cycle, you will most likely have more follow-up decks. You will want to send more information such as your cohort analysis, unit economics, Retention rates (SaaS), etc. These separate decks are not something you provide in bulk to a VC asking to see your data. These are parts of a sales process designed to get you back in front of the VC and have further engagement.
This isn’t the entire playbook, but just a fragment of potential issues surrounding VCs, investors, and raising capital. However, if you have questions, or need help with raising capital, feel free to contact our team at VX associates.
