You want to find out if venture capital makes sense for what you are doing? How it is different from other ways of financing a business (e.g. “angel money”)? When would be the right time to think about venture capital, or if someone like BV Capital would be the right fund to talk to with your project?
At my firm, BV Capital, we were looking for a way to give enterpreneurs (or those who want to become enterpreneurs) an informal way to approach us for a quick first informal chat. Often a 15min phone call gives both sides an idea if it makes sense to talk more, and it saves a lot of time and effort in comparison to the classical in person “first meeting”. That’s why I created the “office hours” - a time for phone conversations for anyone who wants to talk to us about his ideas/project/company.
I have reserved Wednesdays between 4-6pm CET (6hrs ahead of EST, 9h ahead of PST) for these office hours. Since I may have to move them to other days when I am traveling, please make sure you drop me a line with your contact info (preferably Skype) and a few words about the subject at christian at bvcapital dot com to let me know you would like to chat. I will reply with a time/date for a brief conversation. If the Wednesday time slot does not work for you, please suggest another time window.
Many people are frustrated about approaching Venture Capitalists because they think VC is club for the well-networked, and there seems to be some voodoo around the fundraising process. While I have to admit that it sometimes takes me quite a while to get back to enterpreneurs who send me their business plans and sometimes I just don’t have enough bandwidth to read plans with dozens of 10pt size font pages, I do want to make sure that everyone who is interested finds a channel to us. I haven’t seen the concept of VC office hours before, so let’s give it a try!
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Awesome idea Christian! VCs are real approachable people too. I hope a lot of other firms follow suit with this. What’s the worst that can happen, besides being exposed to more and more deal flow. Talk to you soon.
Sincerely,
Jason L. Baptiste
CEO of Viral Ventures, parent company of uGather.com
I do think there needs to be some kind of screen, particularly when you have a strict investment thesis. The worst that could happen would be that you sit through two hours of pitches of retail roll-ups when you’re a strictly IT focused firm.
I find that most of the entrepreneurs who call directly versus trying to build a relationship with us through our blog, by e-mail, or through introduction, are often the ones whose deal is least relevent to what we do—where we are not the best possible partner for them, regardless of how good their business is.