Great advice - investors see so many deals and believe in the perfect market hypothesis. They need to know what changed to break their default cynicism.
The other good thing is the James Bond analogy. My eyes glaze over on any presentation that doesn't tell me the punchline in 5 minutes, and VCs see a lot more of them than me.
After going through a bunch of their other articles, seems like its a bad idea of sequoia to do something like this.
Most of their entrepreneurs will suffer from a selection bias for obvious reasons. Almost every article does a shoddy job decoupling correlation from causation like this one.
It appears that Sequoia's new Grove system doesn't allow user commenting. Which is somewhat of a shame, as it makes the posts very one-sided and unopen to debate, which is what appears to be happening here in the HN comments.
Most likely Sequoia wants debate on its pages as much as Disney wants protests in its theme parks. Hosting constructive debate takes additional effort, so it is a valid choice. Those looking for places to debate VC fundraising and other topics have other places to go, like Fred Wilson's blog avc.com, Union Square Ventures (usv.com), and of course here, among other places.
What about the comments here do you think is useful to them? The orignal post was about how to deliver a useful presentation, presumably to them but probably to a more general audience, but the comments here appear to go off on a tangent about selection bias.
I'm the editor of Grove. First, thanks for checking it out and for talking about it here. Our initial goal was to create some compelling pieces that the entrepreneur community would find helpful. To that end, we took the advice we got from the founders we worked with to build the site, which is launch and improve over time. The ability to comment is certainly one of the things we'd like to add going forward, but we feel we have to earn the right to be a community site first. We're hosting a drinkup next month, which hopefully will be a start. In the meantime, forums like HN where there is already a big community are a great place to discuss the site.
"At this point, the first 5 minutes are almost up and there’s just time to run through an agenda slide, which covers all the usual ground (e.g., product, market size, team, etc).
"From here, many entrepreneurs roll right on to tell the story in greater detail. But your 5 minutes are up, and we suggest you pause and check in with your listeners. Most likely, they have seen businesses in the past which they think are similar. Maybe they have some biases based on prior experience in a similar market. It’s best to flush those out early so you can address them as you go through your presentation. So after laying out the agenda, we like to ask the investors whether there are any particular areas of concern or questions we should be sure to address.
I think the most compelling point about the article is the emphasis on stacking your cards for the first 5 minutes.
I've seen many entrepreneurs approach pitching like a rolling boulder, where they think they gain momentum as more time goes on. More often than not, this isn't the case.
[+] [-] acgourley|12 years ago|reply
Note it's different from their advice on business plans / decks: http://www.sequoiacap.com/grove/posts/6bzx-writing-a-busines...
The link above basically says: purpose, problem, solution, why now...
The article today says: why now, solution, facts
[+] [-] unknown|12 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] mathattack|12 years ago|reply
The other good thing is the James Bond analogy. My eyes glaze over on any presentation that doesn't tell me the punchline in 5 minutes, and VCs see a lot more of them than me.
[+] [-] dheer01|12 years ago|reply
Most of their entrepreneurs will suffer from a selection bias for obvious reasons. Almost every article does a shoddy job decoupling correlation from causation like this one.
[+] [-] triplesec|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] md2be|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 001sky|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] minimaxir|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nswanberg|12 years ago|reply
What about the comments here do you think is useful to them? The orignal post was about how to deliver a useful presentation, presumably to them but probably to a more general audience, but the comments here appear to go off on a tangent about selection bias.
[+] [-] benworthen|12 years ago|reply
FYI here's a link to the drinkup: https://sequoia.co1.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_dpzD7CVJ0DtTwgd
[+] [-] dheer01|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gerad|12 years ago|reply
"At this point, the first 5 minutes are almost up and there’s just time to run through an agenda slide, which covers all the usual ground (e.g., product, market size, team, etc).
"From here, many entrepreneurs roll right on to tell the story in greater detail. But your 5 minutes are up, and we suggest you pause and check in with your listeners. Most likely, they have seen businesses in the past which they think are similar. Maybe they have some biases based on prior experience in a similar market. It’s best to flush those out early so you can address them as you go through your presentation. So after laying out the agenda, we like to ask the investors whether there are any particular areas of concern or questions we should be sure to address.
[+] [-] hansy|12 years ago|reply
I've seen many entrepreneurs approach pitching like a rolling boulder, where they think they gain momentum as more time goes on. More often than not, this isn't the case.
[+] [-] verticalflight|12 years ago|reply
So hopefully others that don't know this, can adjust their behavior, and possibly have a chance at getting funded.