Alex Cook, a partner at Tiger Global who oversaw some of its largest fintech investments and India deals, is departing the firm after a tenure of nearly seven years, three people familiar with the matter told TechCrunch.
Cook has briefed multiple people around him about his departure news in recent days, although he hasn’t explained why he was leaving. The sources requested anonymity as the conversations were private.
His departure adds to high-profile shifts within Tiger Global. Scott Shleifer, who previously led the firm’s private equity business, moved to a senior advisory role last year. John Curtius, who led the firm’s software investments, left in late 2022.
Cook anchored many fintech deals for Tiger Global, including TradingView, TrueLayer, Scalapay, Xendit, Selfbook, Fazz and Refyne. The median size of his deals were about $35 million whereas the median valuation stood at north of $250 million, according to PitchBook.
The departure has come as a surprise to at least some founders. Cook spoke frequently — multiple times a week — to founders, according to some accounts. He assumed responsibility for managing relationships with some portfolio startups previously overseen by Shleifer, according to people familiar with the matter.
Tiger Global declined to comment.
Cook’s focus extended significantly to emerging markets, particularly India, where he frequently visited and met with founders in person. In July 2022, for instance, he told founders in Bengaluru, India, that Tiger Global was about to slow its pace of investments, TechCrunch reported at the time.
This development comes at a challenging time for the venture industry. Tiger Global raised $2.2 billion for its latest VC fund, its smallest fundraising effort in a decade and a stark contrast to its previous years of robust investor demand that had allowed the New York-based giant to raise increasingly larger funds, including its record $12.7 billion fund. At $2.2 billion, to be sure, Tiger Global is still operating one of the largest funds.
Amid this difficult fundraising climate, fueled by investor caution towards VC and private equity investments due to declining returns, Tiger Global announced a significant leadership change in November, with founder Chase Coleman assuming the role of venture chief from Shleifer. Coleman has taken on the responsibility of managing relationships with certain key portfolio startups globally, according to people familiar with the matter.
Alex Cook, a partner at Tiger Global who oversaw some of its largest fintech investments, is departing the firm after a tenure of nearly seven years, three people familiar with the matter told TechCrunch.
Cook has briefed multiple people around him about his departure news in recent days, although he hasn’t explained why he was leaving. The sources requested anonymity as the conversations were private. A Tiger Global spokesperson didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
His departure adds to other high-profile exits at Tiger Global. Scott Shleifer, who previously led the firm’s private equity business, stepped down last year. John Curtius, who led the firm’s software investments, left in late 2022.
Cook anchored many fintech deals for Tiger Global, including TradingView, TrueLayer, Scalapay, Xendit, Selfbook, Fazz, Jar and Refyne. The median size of his deals were about $35 million whereas the median valuation stood at north of $250 million, according to PitchBook.
The departure has come as a surprise to at least some founders. Cook spoke frequently — multiple times a week — to founders, according to some accounts. He assumed responsibility for managing relationships with some portfolio startups previously overseen by Shleifer, according to people familiar with the matter.
Cook’s focus extended significantly to emerging markets, particularly India, where he frequently visited and met with founders in person. In July 2022, for instance, he told founders in Bengaluru, India, that Tiger Global was about to slow its pace of investments, TechCrunch reported at the time.
This development comes at a challenging time for Tiger Global, which recently raised $2.2 billion for its latest VC fund, its smallest fundraising effort in a decade and a stark contrast to its previous years of robust investor demand that had allowed the New York-based giant to raise increasingly larger funds, including its record $12.7 billion fund.
Amid this difficult fundraising climate, characterized by investor caution towards VC and private equity investments due to declining valuations and a slowdown in deals, Tiger Global announced a significant leadership change in November, with founder Chase Coleman assuming the role of venture chief from Shleifer. Coleman has taken on the responsibility of managing relationships with certain key portfolio startups globally, according to people familiar with the matter.
Image Credits: Kelly Sullivan (opens in a new window) / Getty Images
Ruth Foxe Blader has left her role as partner at Anthemis Group after nearly seven years to start her own venture firm, Foxe Capital, TechCrunch learned exclusively today.
Blader is joined by former Anthemis investment associate Kyle Perez. Sophie Winwood, a former principal at Anthemis, is serving as an operating partner. Winwood previously co-founded WVC:E, an organization that pledges to promote “inclusion, empowerment and integration of VC globally,” with Blader.
Over the years, Blader says she has led investments in more than 50 fintech startups, including Lemonade, Branch, Elevate, Flock, Mesh and Amplify.
A desire to invest independently was the main driver behind Blader’s decision to leave London-based Anthemis, Blader told TechCrunch in an interview. The investor says she got a taste of what that was like after she and Winwood started WVC:E in April 2022.
Foxe Capital will continue investing on behalf of Anthemis, serving as a sub advisor for the firm, and essentially managing the vehicle she was hired to run in 2017. When all that capital has been deployed — Blader projects that it will stop writing checks into startups this year out of the Anthemis funds — Foxe Capital will focus on fundraising. Meanwhile, Foxe Capital is being compensated for continuing to run the fund on behalf of Anthemis, according to Blader.
Anthemis continues to have an economic interest in that vehicle but does not own any part of the management company and will only have a continued economic interest in Foxe Capital if it chooses to be an LP when the firm fundraises in the future, according to Blader.
An Anthemis spokesperson confirmed the move, sharing via email: “Ruth wanted to be an independent manager. Anthemis proudly backs her. She will continue to support us as an investor across her current Anthemis funds.”
While Blader travels back and forth currently between France and New York (Blader has been living in Europe/New York for 15 years), Foxe Capital is based in New York City. Its investments will be global, with the U.S. as its home market.
“We have the most familiarity [outside of the U.S.] with Europe but have also done investments in India, Cameroon and LatAm,” she told TechCrunch. “We’ll be looking to invest opportunistically globally.”
Restructuring and a failed SPAC
Anthemis has had its share of upheaval — and turnover — in recent times.
Last April, TechCrunch broke the news that Anthemis Group had completed a restructuring that resulted in its letting go of 16 employees, or about 28% of its staff.
A spokesperson for London-based Anthemis at the time said the move was an effort “to better reflect current market conditions and to set up the business for future growth” against its “strategic priorities.”
Also, last May, TechCrunch reported that Anthemis Group was trying to raise $200 million for a third fund. It had been in the market since 2022 and had only secured commitments of just $36.4 million. Separately, in late April the firm opted to not go through with a SPAC and return the capital, citing market conditions at the time.
In the past 18 months, Anthemis also saw a couple of portfolio companies stumble. In November 2022, controversy surrounding the sudden stepping down of three of Pipe’s co-founders, including its CEO, raised eyebrows. And in 2023, LGBTQ+-focused digital bank Daylight was slammed with a lawsuit by three former employees “alleging age and wage discrimination, whistleblower retaliation, and fraud.” The startup shut down later in the year.
The firm’s 2023 restructuring was not the first time it saw a management shakeup. Anthemis also made headlines in 2018 when its then-CEO and co-founder Nadeem Shaikh resigned after reportedly being the target of a sexual harassment complaint by a female employee.
Blader is not the first fintech-focused investor to venture out on her own in recent times.
Early last year, Peter Ackerson departed fintech-focused Fin Capital to co-found a new firm, Audere Capital. It is still unclear as to whether Ackerson left voluntarily or was forced to leave. A source with familiarity of internal happenings at Fin Capital alleged there was tension between Ackerson and managing partner and founder Logan Allin around portfolio company alternative financing startup Pipe — an investment into which Ackerson led and on whose board he sat. Audere has invested in five startups, according to PitchBook — only one of which is focused on financial services.
Want more fintech news in your inbox? Sign up for The Interchange here.
Ex-Fin Capital general partner, who led its investment in Pipe, starts new venture firm
ContributorPaul Hsu is the founder and CEO of Decasonic, the venture and digital assets fund building mainstream adoption of blockchain innovation. As a tech investor and operator, Decasonic partners with outlier founders to build the web3 frontier and has invested in AI and blockchain since 2013.
For years, the zero interest rate environment fueled an ambitious ecosystem of venture capitalists and technology innovators seeking to raise big rounds, drive hyperscale, and move on to the next if the first thing didn’t work out. The path, rules, and standard practices reflected an era of risk-on, almost free money.
Today, the technology industry is recovering from the bear markets of 2023 with a new discipline focused on traction, substance, and capital efficiency. Limited partners have become more selective with investments into venture funds. Venture investors have raised the bar for deals, requiring due diligence to reveal some traction to showcase a startup’s potential, depth in the data room demonstrating the substance behind the vision, and a path toward capital-efficient growth.
With these new areas of heightened investor focus, what are the new rules for identifying, pitching, and partnering with the right venture investor?
The following is a compilation of 12 “dos and don’ts” for how innovators should pitch and partner with a new class of technology venture investors who balance market realism with optimism in driving a vision with substance.
Overall
1. DO allow experience to inform and challenge your perspective
More than ever, and just like any relationship, finding the right venture investor starts with building a foundation based on vision, values, and trust. Early-stage venture capital requires a team effort to find product-market fit and accelerate revenue growth. But value-add venture investors have the strategic advantage of guiding founders toward signals versus noise, drawing on prior case studies of success and failure in a particular domain, and connecting companies to valuable sales and distribution partnerships.
2. DON’T give up
Like many activities in the startup world, success finds those who have grit, courage, persistence, durability, and adaptability. Venture capital often finds nonconsensus and nonobvious deals, but the process may take hundreds of meetings before the first yes.
At the same time, balance this grit with the realistic optimism of taking feedback from every step of the process to confront and confirm the compelling need for venture capital. Almost every company is better serviced by not raising venture capital and instead relying on profitable growth and other sources of capital.
Financing round prep work
3. DO prepare for your fundraising process like your company’s life depends on it
Much of the fundraising work begins before your first pitch, with detailed research into the venture funding landscape focused on your vision. Prequalifying potential venture partners is essential to avoid spinning your wheels later. Some venture investors are pre-product investors focused on a particular sector. In contrast, others may require more traction and are generalists — a variety of venture investing strategies will impact your success.
You want to ensure the venture partners align with your stage of business and the check size you are looking for. After this prequalification, staging your process by phases of outreach and conversations can help kickstart the fundraising momentum you will need to close your lead investor.
4. DON’T assume all investors are created equal
In most fundraising, identifying and closing a lead investor can catalyze the entire round. An effective lead investor performs the requisites such as doing due diligence, setting financing terms, and attracting follow-up capital into the financing syndicate. Some innovators close funding on a rolling basis, while others use a first-come, first-served basis. This can lead to complications later on in the deal process. When you pitch an investor, especially in 2024, one of the first questions is whether they have the capacity and capability to lead your financing round.
Outreach
5. DO leverage your professional network
This includes entrepreneurs, investors, ex-colleagues, attorneys, CPAs, contract finance professionals, marketers, PR firms, and other consultants for warm intros to venture partners. All requests for introductions and meetings must be made with as much context as possible. The similarities to job hunting are very close; the more resistance barriers you can lower, the better. Similar to a job search, validation from people who have worked with you in the past can help improve the likelihood of venture financing.
6. DON’T abandon cold outreach altogether, especially if you have something “big”
Venture partners are generally less discriminating when it comes to taking intro calls and meetings from entrepreneurs who can demonstrate durable use cases and revenue, so LinkedIn outreach may suffice and has the potential to yield conversions.
This includes an overview of the request (e.g., intended financing structure, financing size, funds use, and timeline to close), a punch list of bona fides (e.g., stage of the company, revenue growth, notable customers and investors, industry awards), and availability to connect (e.g., via video or in person).
The pitch
7. DO spend a few minutes establishing rapport and outlining an agenda for the meeting
Cover the basics like company description, financing overview, financial snapshot, target customer, intended durable use case(s), network effects, management backgrounds and unique qualifications to attack the market opportunity, market size and drivers for growth, intended business model, and legal structure.
Allocate a reasonable amount of time for Q&A. This includes being aware of the length of the meeting and tailoring your pitch to leave adequate time for questions and discussion about the next steps. Ask about the venture partner’s background, sweet spot, typical terms, process, and timeline. Most importantly, detail the next steps in the process.
8. DON’T overwhelm investors with too much information in the initial pitch
Entrepreneurs need to walk the fine line between providing enough info to ensure no significant showstoppers but not so much that it overwhelms a potential partner on the first meeting. There is power in brevity and conciseness, showcasing how an innovator can distill a complex market into an investor’s digestible understanding of why a company can get big.
Venture investors are looking for the key data points on why a company gets big, why that moment is today, and how fast that company grows. Sharing this information concisely and persuasively will help investors make the investment case to their partners.
Everything in your deck is a way to prove how you are building a multi-billion-dollar company. Your product is just the details of what people will repeatedly buy from your company. Your prototype and waitlist are the reasons for demonstrating that your product has product-market fit. Your go-to-market is a marketing strategy in service of a believable distribution channel.
Due diligence
9. DO communicate clearly, accurately, thoroughly, and punctually
Completing things promptly and accurately at the beginning of your relationship with a new investor is critical to building credibility and trust. Speed testifies to your intelligence and experience — the best founders can ship with speed, execute their fundraising with speed, and communicate with speed. When you get back to a VC in less than a day with well-thought-out responses, you show your commitment to this early partnership, as well as your hustle and intelligence. It makes an impression. Delay works against you and suggests you’re not interested or are shopping terms.
You don’t need to have everything figured out. You do need to have everything consistent.
10. DON’T exclude important due diligence items like a product roadmap that aligns with your vision
The quality of a due diligence data room can quickly invalidate a great pitch. A big red flag starts with what’s missing from the data room, as this shows a gap in the intended substance of a pitch and the execution details to fulfill such statements in the pitch.
In addition, avoid sending a product roadmap that misaligns with your vision and mission — this is one of the many inconsistencies that can kill a deal fast. Don’t send info in a manner that can’t be shared with others internally, that obfuscates financial shortcomings like churn by cherry-picking retention metrics for specific periods or cohorts, or that can come off as being a bait-and-switch with substantially different sets of projections pre- and post-term sheet. And don’t send financial models by PDF or PowerPoint.
The best fundraisers run like clockwork. The best pitches have super alignment. The best ideas are coherent. So many stories don’t add up when a venture investor looks under the hood. If what you say in your pitch deck does not align with your financials, your website, or what you have on LinkedIn, it’s an immediate red flag.
It’s all about making it as easy as possible for your venture partner to say yes to an investment.
Closing the deal
11. DO understand your audience and their motivations
The associates who originate deals are evaluated on their ability to find and close high-quality deals and are predisposed to saying yes. Hence, they arm themselves with the info necessary to present the merits of the opportunity to their internal stakeholders and push them to involve other decision-makers in the process. Very few deals will close on one or two meetings, so your goal in most interactions with venture investors is to get to the next stage of conversations.
They are your champion, not your gatekeeper. Don’t try to get around them. Your success is their success.
12. DON’T hide issues, withhold information, or delay delivering bad news
While no one likes to hear about missed plans, top long-term venture investors understand that wins and losses are part and parcel with operating startups, so it’s better to tackle the issue early and head-on when time is on your side and options are abundant. Alternatively, venture relationships can go south quickly when one party or another receives an unwelcome surprise at the eleventh hour.
Fundraising is about momentum. Demonstrate momentum with weekly investor updates that show you’re tracking up and to the right. Capitalize on every significant milestone and achievement with another headline.
Image Credits: Kelly Sullivan (opens in a new window) / Getty Images
Ruth Foxe Blader has left her role as partner at Anthemis Group after nearly seven years to start her own venture firm, Foxe Capital, TechCrunch learned exclusively today.
Blader is joined by former Anthemis investment associate Kyle Perez. Sophie Winwood, a former principal at Anthemis, is serving as an operating partner. Winwood previously co-founded WVC:E, an organization that pledges to promote “inclusion, empowerment and integration of VC globally,” with Blader.
Over the years, Blader says she has led investments in more than 50 fintech startups, including Lemonade, Branch, Elevate, Flock, Mesh and Amplify.
A desire to invest independently was the main driver behind Blader’s decision to leave London-based Anthemis, Blader told TechCrunch in an interview. The investor says she got a taste of what that was like after she and Winwood started WVC:E in April 2022.
Foxe Capital will continue investing on behalf of Anthemis, serving as a sub advisor for the firm, and essentially managing the vehicle she was hired to run in 2017. When all that capital has been deployed — Blader projects that it will stop writing checks into startups this year out of the Anthemis funds — Foxe Capital will focus on fundraising. Meanwhile, Foxe Capital is being compensated for continuing to run the fund on behalf of Anthemis, according to Blader.
Anthemis continues to have an economic interest in that vehicle but does not own any part of the management company and will only have a continued economic interest in Foxe Capital if it chooses to be an LP when the firm fundraises in the future, according to Blader.
An Anthemis spokesperson confirmed the move, sharing via email: “Ruth wanted to be an independent manager. Anthemis proudly backs her. She will continue to support us as an investor across her current Anthemis funds.”
While Blader travels back and forth currently between France and New York (Blader has been living in Europe/New York for 15 years), Foxe Capital is based in New York City. Its investments will be global, with the U.S. as its home market.
“We have the most familiarity [outside of the U.S.] with Europe but have also done investments in India, Cameroon and LatAm,” she told TechCrunch. “We’ll be looking to invest opportunistically globally.”
Restructuring and a failed SPAC
Anthemis has had its share of upheaval — and turnover — in recent times.
Last April, TechCrunch broke the news that Anthemis Group had completed a restructuring that resulted in its letting go of 16 employees, or about 28% of its staff.
A spokesperson for London-based Anthemis at the time said the move was an effort “to better reflect current market conditions and to set up the business for future growth” against its “strategic priorities.”
Also, last May, TechCrunch reported that Anthemis Group was trying to raise $200 million for a third fund. It had been in the market since 2022 and had only secured commitments of just $36.4 million. Separately, in late April the firm opted to not go through with a SPAC and return the capital, citing market conditions at the time.
In the past 18 months, Anthemis also saw a couple of portfolio companies stumble. In November 2022, controversy surrounding the sudden stepping down of three of Pipe’s co-founders, including its CEO, raised eyebrows. And in 2023, LGBTQ+-focused digital bank Daylight was slammed with a lawsuit by three former employees “alleging age and wage discrimination, whistleblower retaliation, and fraud.” The startup shut down later in the year.
The firm’s 2023 restructuring was not the first time it saw a management shakeup. Anthemis also made headlines in 2018 when its then-CEO and co-founder Nadeem Shaikh resigned after reportedly being the target of a sexual harassment complaint by a female employee.
Blader is not the first fintech-focused investor to venture out on her own in recent times.
Early last year, Peter Ackerson departed fintech-focused Fin Capital to co-found a new firm, Audere Capital. It is still unclear as to whether Ackerson left voluntarily or was forced to leave. A source with familiarity of internal happenings at Fin Capital alleged there was tension between Ackerson and managing partner and founder Logan Allin around portfolio company alternative financing startup Pipe — an investment into which Ackerson led and on whose board he sat. Audere has invested in five startups, according to PitchBook — only one of which is focused on financial services.
Want more fintech news in your inbox? Sign up for The Interchange here.
Ex-Fin Capital general partner, who led its investment in Pipe, starts new venture firm
Paul Hsu is the founder and CEO of Decasonic, the venture and digital assets fund building mainstream adoption of blockchain innovation. As a tech investor and operator, Decasonic partners with outlier founders to build the web3 frontier and has invested in AI and blockchain since 2013.
For years, the zero interest rate environment fueled an ambitious ecosystem of venture capitalists and technology innovators seeking to raise big rounds, drive hyperscale, and move on to the next if the first thing didn’t work out. The path, rules, and standard practices reflected an era of risk-on, almost free money.
Today, the technology industry is recovering from the bear markets of 2023 with a new discipline focused on traction, substance, and capital efficiency. Limited partners have become more selective with investments into venture funds. Venture investors have raised the bar for deals, requiring due diligence to reveal some traction to showcase a startup’s potential, depth in the data room demonstrating the substance behind the vision, and a path toward capital-efficient growth.
With these new areas of heightened investor focus, what are the new rules for identifying, pitching, and partnering with the right venture investor?
The following is a compilation of 12 “dos and don’ts” for how innovators should pitch and partner with a new class of technology venture investors who balance market realism with optimism in driving a vision with substance.
Overall
1. DO allow experience to inform and challenge your perspective
More than ever, and just like any relationship, finding the right venture investor starts with building a foundation based on vision, values, and trust. Early-stage venture capital requires a team effort to find product-market fit and accelerate revenue growth. But value-add venture investors have the strategic advantage of guiding founders toward signals versus noise, drawing on prior case studies of success and failure in a particular domain, and connecting companies to valuable sales and distribution partnerships.
2. DON’T give up
Like many activities in the startup world, success finds those who have grit, courage, persistence, durability, and adaptability. Venture capital often finds nonconsensus and nonobvious deals, but the process may take hundreds of meetings before the first yes.
At the same time, balance this grit with the realistic optimism of taking feedback from every step of the process to confront and confirm the compelling need for venture capital. Almost every company is better serviced by not raising venture capital and instead relying on profitable growth and other sources of capital.
Financing round prep work
3. DO prepare for your fundraising process like your company’s life depends on it
Much of the fundraising work begins before your first pitch, with detailed research into the venture funding landscape focused on your vision. Prequalifying potential venture partners is essential to avoid spinning your wheels later. Some venture investors are pre-product investors focused on a particular sector. In contrast, others may require more traction and are generalists — a variety of venture investing strategies will impact your success.
You want to ensure the venture partners align with your stage of business and the check size you are looking for. After this prequalification, staging your process by phases of outreach and conversations can help kickstart the fundraising momentum you will need to close your lead investor.
4. DON’T assume all investors are created equal
In most fundraising, identifying and closing a lead investor can catalyze the entire round. An effective lead investor performs the requisites such as doing due diligence, setting financing terms, and attracting follow-up capital into the financing syndicate. Some innovators close funding on a rolling basis, while others use a first-come, first-served basis. This can lead to complications later on in the deal process. When you pitch an investor, especially in 2024, one of the first questions is whether they have the capacity and capability to lead your financing round.
Outreach
5. DO leverage your professional network
This includes entrepreneurs, investors, ex-colleagues, attorneys, CPAs, contract finance professionals, marketers, PR firms, and other consultants for warm intros to venture partners. All requests for introductions and meetings must be made with as much context as possible. The similarities to job hunting are very close; the more resistance barriers you can lower, the better. Similar to a job search, validation from people who have worked with you in the past can help improve the likelihood of venture financing.
6. DON’T abandon cold outreach altogether, especially if you have something “big”
Venture partners are generally less discriminating when it comes to taking intro calls and meetings from entrepreneurs who can demonstrate durable use cases and revenue, so LinkedIn outreach may suffice and has the potential to yield conversions.
This includes an overview of the request (e.g., intended financing structure, financing size, funds use, and timeline to close), a punch list of bona fides (e.g., stage of the company, revenue growth, notable customers and investors, industry awards), and availability to connect (e.g., via video or in person).
The pitch
7. DO spend a few minutes establishing rapport and outlining an agenda for the meeting
Cover the basics like company description, financing overview, financial snapshot, target customer, intended durable use case(s), network effects, management backgrounds and unique qualifications to attack the market opportunity, market size and drivers for growth, intended business model, and legal structure.
Allocate a reasonable amount of time for Q&A. This includes being aware of the length of the meeting and tailoring your pitch to leave adequate time for questions and discussion about the next steps. Ask about the venture partner’s background, sweet spot, typical terms, process, and timeline. Most importantly, detail the next steps in the process.
8. DON’T overwhelm investors with too much information in the initial pitch
Entrepreneurs need to walk the fine line between providing enough info to ensure no significant showstoppers but not so much that it overwhelms a potential partner on the first meeting. There is power in brevity and conciseness, showcasing how an innovator can distill a complex market into an investor’s digestible understanding of why a company can get big.
Venture investors are looking for the key data points on why a company gets big, why that moment is today, and how fast that company grows. Sharing this information concisely and persuasively will help investors make the investment case to their partners.
Everything in your deck is a way to prove how you are building a multi-billion-dollar company. Your product is just the details of what people will repeatedly buy from your company. Your prototype and waitlist are the reasons for demonstrating that your product has product-market fit. Your go-to-market is a marketing strategy in service of a believable distribution channel.
Due diligence
9. DO communicate clearly, accurately, thoroughly, and punctually
Completing things promptly and accurately at the beginning of your relationship with a new investor is critical to building credibility and trust. Speed testifies to your intelligence and experience — the best founders can ship with speed, execute their fundraising with speed, and communicate with speed. When you get back to a VC in less than a day with well-thought-out responses, you show your commitment to this early partnership, as well as your hustle and intelligence. It makes an impression. Delay works against you and suggests you’re not interested or are shopping terms.
You don’t need to have everything figured out. You do need to have everything consistent.
10. DON’T exclude important due diligence items like a product roadmap that aligns with your vision
The quality of a due diligence data room can quickly invalidate a great pitch. A big red flag starts with what’s missing from the data room, as this shows a gap in the intended substance of a pitch and the execution details to fulfill such statements in the pitch.
In addition, avoid sending a product roadmap that misaligns with your vision and mission — this is one of the many inconsistencies that can kill a deal fast. Don’t send info in a manner that can’t be shared with others internally, that obfuscates financial shortcomings like churn by cherry-picking retention metrics for specific periods or cohorts, or that can come off as being a bait-and-switch with substantially different sets of projections pre- and post-term sheet. And don’t send financial models by PDF or PowerPoint.
The best fundraisers run like clockwork. The best pitches have super alignment. The best ideas are coherent. So many stories don’t add up when a venture investor looks under the hood. If what you say in your pitch deck does not align with your financials, your website, or what you have on LinkedIn, it’s an immediate red flag.
It’s all about making it as easy as possible for your venture partner to say yes to an investment.
Closing the deal
11. DO understand your audience and their motivations
The associates who originate deals are evaluated on their ability to find and close high-quality deals and are predisposed to saying yes. Hence, they arm themselves with the info necessary to present the merits of the opportunity to their internal stakeholders and push them to involve other decision-makers in the process. Very few deals will close on one or two meetings, so your goal in most interactions with venture investors is to get to the next stage of conversations.
They are your champion, not your gatekeeper. Don’t try to get around them. Your success is their success.
12. DON’T hide issues, withhold information, or delay delivering bad news
While no one likes to hear about missed plans, top long-term venture investors understand that wins and losses are part and parcel with operating startups, so it’s better to tackle the issue early and head-on when time is on your side and options are abundant. Alternatively, venture relationships can go south quickly when one party or another receives an unwelcome surprise at the eleventh hour.
Fundraising is about momentum. Demonstrate momentum with weekly investor updates that show you’re tracking up and to the right. Capitalize on every significant milestone and achievement with another headline.
Terri Burns, a former partner at GV, is venturing into a new chapter of her career by launching her own venture firm called Type Capital.
The company will focus on early-stage startups, cutting pre-seed and seed-sized checks, reports Fortune. Burns told Fortune she is still in the beginning stages of building out her firm and hasn’t invested in any companies yet. She confirmed to TechCrunch that her new firm has launched but declined to offer more details on her plans or the size of the fund.
The launch of Type Capital is a significant milestone, as it marks Terri Burns’ entry into the select group of Black women who have their own venture firms. Black women who have co-founded or solo-founded their own firms include Jewel Burks Solomon from Collab Capital, Sarah Kunst from Cleo Capital, and Monique Woodard from Cake Ventures.
This achievement further underscores Burns’ remarkable journey in the venture industry, which began when she joined GV in 2017. In 2020, at the age of 26, she made history as the firm’s youngest and first-ever Black female partner.
Burns started her career at Twitter as an associate product manager before becoming a Kauffman Fellow and studying computer science at NYU. In 2021, she became the youngest member of the university’s board of trustees.
During her tenure at GV, Terri Burns played a pivotal role in many of the firm’s successful investments. Notably, she led the investment into the social app HAGS, which was later acquired by Snapchat. Her involvement in the popular Partiful, which has since raised over $20 million from investors, including a16z, further solidified her as a savvy consumer tastemaker. She’s an angel investor and also co-founded an angel investment collective that has invested in at least 11 companies, including Clubhouse.
Burns is interested in Gen Z founders, digital consumer companies, developer tools, and, of course, artificial intelligence. Like many seed-stage firms, she wants to be the first check in. Too often, she said, investors follow the hype train, missing out on good deals as they wait for signals from other investors that a company is worthwhile. She hopes to find promising founders and use her considerable network to help them find follow-on opportunities, she told Fortune.
