How to get a VC’s attention–Advice from Rick Segal

You should know, of course, that JLA Ventures is one of b5media’s VC backers (the other is Brightspark).  Now I read Rick Segal not just cause he’s our VC, I was reading him long before that, I read him to get insight into venture capital and entrepreneurship.

This recent post, which I don’t think Rick’s mind is spooky at all–messy, well, who am I to talk, Rick outlines some insights that I think entrepreneurs who are looking for VC funding should read:

There are two ways to answer this. First, is the obvious answer: All things coming in the door are evaluated on their own merits.  The second is really an expanded answer to the first one so here goes.

Tons of VCs will tell you that getting a referral is the fastest/easiest way to get into a VC’s office to make that first pitch.  I suspect with the massively large players, this is probably true. They see 1000s of deals every day, field 100s of calls, 100s of emails, etc, so getting to the top of that list will not be a cake walk.

For me and the spooky place called my mind/space/time, there is somewhat of an unofficial process that I use. Source: The Post Money Value: Inside the (messy and spooky) VC Mind

If you have read his post by now, I’m not offended if you open it in a tab, read it and come back here, you should probably be thinking “yeah that makes sense”.

The key for me is: Solve a problem.

No, don’t create a solution waiting for a problem.  Look at what people need now and figure out a better or new way to solve it.

Take RSS.  Both FeedHub and aideRSS are working to solve a problem–info overload.  It’s something I suffer from all the freakin’ time.

Think about it.  What isn’t working.  What could be better.  Now, can you make it better?

Start there.

Then talk to Rick.