This year, between Paul and I, we had more than 40 investor meetings. Each meeting takes about a day out of our other tasks. You have to schedule, prep, commute, meet, commute back, follow up, etc.
That would be great if the investors were truly interested in Sampa, or if the meeting would have resulted in a term sheet. The problem is that most investors are not really interested in investing on you. The worst part is that they know that but they are not up front about it. Why? They want to hear the pitch. They want to keep connected for when another lead investor comes in, they can jump onboard. Or they are an advisor or investor in a competitor, and they are just sniffing around.
Because of that, about a month ago, Paul and I completely changed our pitch strategy. To begin with Paul is the only one that go to first meetings. This way at least one of us can continue to work on the product. Second, we do some background check to make sure that they are serious about investing on our space.
Here is a checklist to see if a VC is a good fit for Sampa:
- Invested in the consumer space
- Invested in a "Web 2.0" company
- Invested in a company in Seattle
- Have not invested in a direct solution alternative to Sampa (a.k.a., a competitor)
- Is not at the end of its fund
- Understand ad-driven business
- Understand user generated content / social media
And prior to any meeting, we always check out www.thefunded.com . It can be quite entertaining.
PS: This post was written offline, that is probably why it has so few misspellings.
I'm the Co-founder & CTO of 
