If your CEO isn’t pitching to VCs, you’ll never raise money

If your CEO isn’t pitching to VCs, you’ll never raise money

a year ago
Anonymous $gM56WhLPcK

https://techcrunch.com/2023/01/16/your-ceo-should-be-fundraising/

Occasionally, in my role as a consultant, I am approached by companies that have a plan in place for their fundraising that doesn’t involve the CEO or a member of the founding team running point on the fundraising process. From one perspective, I can understand that: VC fundraising does, from the outside, look a lot like sales, and if you have a good salesperson, why not let them do what they do best?

The issue is that while salespeople are great at sales, the VC fundraising process is very different than landing a customer. You’re trying to find an alignment between the company and a long-term partner who will have a significant amount of input into the future of your startup. And if there are discrepancies between the sales process and the deeper due diligence into the company (and there will be, because the sales team has a different long-term perspective on what success looks like), that can make the whole deal fall apart.

If your CEO isn’t pitching to VCs, you’ll never raise money

Jan 16, 2023, 3:15pm UTC
https://techcrunch.com/2023/01/16/your-ceo-should-be-fundraising/ > Occasionally, in my role as a consultant, I am approached by companies that have a plan in place for their fundraising that doesn’t involve the CEO or a member of the founding team running point on the fundraising process. From one perspective, I can understand that: VC fundraising does, from the outside, look a lot like sales, and if you have a good salesperson, why not let them do what they do best? > The issue is that while salespeople are great at sales, the VC fundraising process is very different than landing a customer. You’re trying to find an alignment between the company and a long-term partner who will have a significant amount of input into the future of your startup. And if there are discrepancies between the sales process and the deeper due diligence into the company (and there will be, because the sales team has a different long-term perspective on what success looks like), that can make the whole deal fall apart.