"Just once I wish someone would come in and say 'Our projections are wildly optimistic'".
From Venture Capital Dispatch:
The following dispatch comes from Ben Rooney, the technology editor of The Wall Street Journal Europe:
The Dublin SmartCamp 2010 final is a grand affair. The main sessions are housed in the same building in which the first Dáil Éireann sat — and was apparently built in eight weeks which is a lot faster than a lot of start-ups.
Sitting in on a very funny presentation by Bill Reichert, managing director of Garage Technology Ventures, gave the entrepreneurs advice on how to raise funds, and more importantly how to talk to VCs.
His best slide of all — the top 10 lies entrepreneurs tell VCs:
- Our projections are conservative
- Our target market is $56 billion
- We have a world class team
- Our average sales cycle is 90 days
- We have no direct competitor
...MORE
Always, always remember:
"Fundamentally VCs are risk adverse – they want no risk in the deal,
if we could handle risk we'd be entrepreneurs."
if we could handle risk we'd be entrepreneurs."
– Victor Westerlind, General Partner at Cleantech VC firm Rockport Capital
From our post "Climateer Line of the Day: Venture Capital Edition".
