Dear VCs - Please Don't Ask to "Learn More About Our Business" - (Ep. 0028) from The Nomics Update

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Clay Collins

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Dear VCs - Please Don't Ask to "Learn More About Our Business" - (Ep. 0028)

6 minutes Posted Jan 14, 2019 at 9:35 pm.

] and learn a little bit more about your business." These emails really get me ... First off, yeah, it's great that they say something complimentary about the business, but they literally offer nothing in exchange for hopping on the phone and often, as I found the hard way, having to educate them on the industry, educate them on the business model.

] critiquing our business model, asking who our big customers are and in these situations, when I've taken these calls, and I've only taken them a couple of times and not in this business, not at Nomics, they're essentially just trying to pump you for information about your business because they want to make sure that they don't miss out on the opportunity to invest in a great company. And almost [00:01:30] never, almost never on these calls ... and again, take it into consideration that I've only done a couple of these, do they provide any value in exchange, right. They just want to hear you and I think this works potentially on some entrepreneurs. I mean like, it must work on some level, which is why they do it.

] who's filling out a spreadsheet about companies in your space. That's probably the most benign version. The most malicious version is that there's a VC that is considering investing in a company that's competitive with yours and they're trying to get as much information as they can about competitive companies before making the investment that they really want to make, which is in [00:02:30] your business enemy or whatever, at least a competitor. And so now, after they've invested in that competitor, they can tell the competitor all the information that they have about you. I can't tell you the number of times that someone has sent to me, a pitch deck from a competitive business that contains details about a business that's competing with mine.

] in my opinion, that people are just sharing pitch decks left and right, in that fashion. I guess my advice here to VCs if you're listening to this ... so to VCs or analysts that are doing these calls, my advice is, really get to know the business and offer some kind of exchange of value. [00:03:30] Don't just say, "Hey, I'd love to learn more." Like why? Why should I tell you more about the business? So offer and consider why an entrepreneur, who doesn't have much time at all, why should they spend an hour with you, telling you about ... educating you on this space and giving you the inside track? Can you offer something in exchange? To entrepreneurs, I guess I have a few pieces of advice. The first is, in general, [00:04:00] don't do these calls with analysts or associates.

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So today's entry is a bit of a rant, and it's really around an email that I get pretty often. Especially when we do things that start getting a little bit of public attention. I often get an email from a VC, that essentially says, "Hey, I'm from such and such VC firm. I'd really like to hop on the phone [

Then they start asking questions where they're [

But often it's ... on the other end of those phone calls, is just an analyst [

And that man, that is not cool, [

Just never do these calls with analysts of associates, only do these with partners and you know when I've asked for that in the past. Someone will write in like, "Hey, we really love what you're doing, we'd love to learn more." Okay, I've asked to speak with a partner on the phone, I was like, "Okay, I'll do it with a partner."

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