What Should You Send a VC Before Your Meeting?

When you are new to fund-raising, one of the most difficult things to understand is how to communicate with investors. Also, what information should they keep confidential. Let me, a former entrepreneur and VC, offer some guidance.

This is part of a series about improving your fund-raising game. Click the link to see the first post and the complete outline.

You should have multiple versions (a visual presentation in Keynote or PPT that is shared as a PDF) of your "pitch deck". Each occasion must have a specific goal.

Before the Meeting

There is much debate and angst about whether to send the deck in advance. Two issues are raised by those who oppose sending it.

Because an investor has already seen your deck and made decisions, you lose the ability of controlling the narrative and to inspire verbally.

Because the VC has your deck, and hasn’t made any commitments to it, confidential information could be leaked.

While I can understand both sides of the argument, I strongly believe in sending out materials in advance. What you send is the key.

Remember, the purpose of an email to a VC and an introduction from a trusted connection is to get you to the meeting.

Entrepreneurs make two mistakes: they either write too many emails (everybody has to have too many email so it gets skimmed/not digested) or they don't have a deck, which makes it difficult for VCs to quickly assess their suitability as potential investors.

You will need to send a "teaser card" which you should have prepared regardless of whether you are fund-raising. The reader should be able to quickly scan and visualise your materials in order to understand them.

• Who are you?
• What you do
• Why the who and what are truly singular
• Why the market opportunity is so big
• What unique, defensible IP did you create / Will you continue to build it if the market is right?

It should be visually appealing. Compelling. It is visually stunning. It can be 8-12 pages long. The Title Page can include "YourCo Teaser Deck" (or "YourCo Company Backgrounder") to make it clear that this is not your complete pitch deck.

It is important to only send enough information to get the meeting (a great deck sells better that a long email), but not too much to leave the opportunity to impress the person at the actual meeting.

What about privacy and confidentiality? Poppycock. You should feel happy about a teaser deck that is leaked. It will make you happier because it will show how great you are. This is a marketing deck, and it shouldn't reveal any secret sauce that could be copied by your competitors and cause you to fail. Nearly every funding-worthy idea has five amazing teams working together to accomplish the same thing. Execution and team are what determine the winners.

In a previous post, I discussed why you should email the damn deck. You should 100% send a deck and NOT send a link. (Read my post to learn why).

Finally, while I understand that you love your high-quality images which cause your file size to reach 82MB, this is not the best solution if your goal to get your deck read. While you can create stunning fidelity images that you can use in person, you should also be able to send a smaller version using your presentation tool. I recommend a size of less than 10MB.

The Meeting

The last reason why you should send the teaserdeck in advance is to make sure that your VC has read it. A VC who has seen your deck will be more likely to understand the basic premise and arrive prepared to discuss and debate the merits of your deal. You will get more value from the meeting, regardless of whether they invest.

Your teaser deck would probably have 8-12 pages.

• Team
• Problems in the market
• Your solution solves the problem
• Progress to date (financial, team, customers, revenue, if significant).
• TAM (market size / why this will prove valuable)

Your "meeting deck", should only be an extension of your teaser deck. It would provide a better description of the market problem and likely the unit economics of the solution. Additionally, it would give more detail about your progress so far. It would also include:

• The company's future vision/where it is headed
• Your financial plans (6-quarters P&L, 3-year annual P&L).
• What amount you are raising, how much cash is left, and what milestones will be reached

Your meeting deck and your teaser deck are different in that they have more detail and are willing to share more sensitive, forward-leaning information. You could start a meeting by saying "I know that you have seen our teaser deck, but I have a longer version where you can get more insights here." This will establish the fact that you are not privy to all of it -- it is worth your time.

The meeting deck should be kept short (15-25 pages) to ensure that you can complete it in a time limit of 45 minutes. The "narrative" should be compelling enough to keep the reader's attention and help place the company in context. You should have 15-20 more detailed slides after the main presentation.

These extra slides are sometimes called "pocket slides", which means you always have them handy in case you need them. They can interrupt your narrative so it's best to not present them. However, if you have a super-detailed person who is willing to go into detail and dig deep, pulling them out will make you a hero. You'll look like you're fully prepared and have thought of everything. They work best when you can prove what you asked.

This is a crucial piece of advice that you should remember when creating your meeting deck.

A meeting deck's purpose is not to impress investors with your ability to make slides, but to help you have a conversation. You've lost if the investor spends too much time looking at slides. Fund-raising meetings are about building relationships. You can't do that by looking into the eyes of someone else and having a two way conversation.

Entrepreneurs make a huge mistake all the time when they go into pitch mode. They are unable to stop and take in every slide without stopping. At the end, they feel proud of how well they did. The VC will thank you and smile later. Great meetings are not about pitching but about having a great discussion. This is why you should have a brief meeting deck and separate pockets slides that provide details.

After the Meeting

You can send a teaser deck to the attendees in advance, and present a meeting deck at the meeting. The next step is to thank them for attending the meeting and recommend possible "next steps".

If you feel you gained engagement in your first meeting, you may ask for a second one. This could be with the person only or with one of their colleagues. If you present on your own, but you have a highly skilled CTO, you might ask for a second meeting. This will allow you to demonstrate why your tech is unique. If you feel your tech is relevant to their potential customers, another great strategy would be to request to meet with portfolio companies. This will make your VC meeting a sales lead and allow the VC to get input from a trusted source (a portfolio firm) without having more time.

It is important to note that if you don't have all your slides, this can be a great source of material for the next meeting. This will allow you to show more details that you didn’t get to. These slides should not be sent. Instead, go back to present them. It is always better to attend a shorter meeting so that you can leave the VC eager to learn more.

As you move to a later stage of fund raising, you will likely have many follow-up decks to discuss topics like:

• Unit economics
• Analyses of LTV/CAC
• Cohort analyses
• Retention rates (SaaS), or repurchase rate (eCommerce).
• etc.

These decks are part your fund-raising process. They should not be provided in bulk to VCs asking for access to your data room. These are part of a sales process that will get you in front of VCs and encourage further engagement.