Wasted Time
The entrepreneurial investment decision makers, in most cases venture capitalists, create just as many filters to get in initial contact as they do when judging your business development. I spoke to an early stage venture capitalist today with a solid track record who told me that he spends approximately 20% of his time listening to filtered entrepreneurs pitch him concepts. He said that one arena where entrepreneurs fail is in wasting time of their counter-parties, including investors, customers and related stakeholders.
He wasn’t portraying ignorance (and he wasn’t referring to me). But, his basic point was that there are actions an entrepreneur should take, but usually don’t, that can make any counter-party conversation more efficient, resulting in less wasted time.
My intuitive response was that some wasted time should be expected. Right?
The obvious answer is, yes, of course. In any creative industry, there is a good amount of trial and error based on ambiguous market judgments and assumptions. But still, in any creative industry, absolutes do exist–you just need to hunt them down. That’s how an entrepreneur is resourceful.
The quicker you can find them, the more result oriented your meetings with everyone will be. Simple examples include citing the size of your market, the identity of your niche target market and the features customers have committed to pay for.
Stating these items in your pitch, or at least holding them in your back pocket for when questions arise, will result in less wasted time. Less wasted means more efficient conversations. Efficient conversations means traction. And traction leads to those golden milestones called results.
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