VC Deal Lawyer

I really enjoyed Seth Godin’s short entry entitled The Reason Riding a Unicycle is Difficult.  In fact, I generally enjoys his entries – as he posts often and even the short ones can be packed with thoughtful ideas.  Back to the entry – I can really appreciate his view of the binary nature of riding a unicycle.  You are either falling or riding.  One or the other.  There is no in-between.  The transition from falling to riding can happen in a split second while your heart is in your throat and then all of the sudden you are moving right along.  Countless times in my career I can think of situations where it seemed like we were dead in the water but all of the sudden things turned around.

I also enjoyed Jeff Bussgang’s article In VC deals, Price Doesn’t Matter – But the “Promote” Does.  It is a great add-on to my previous entry entitled Negotiating Term Sheets:  Should Entrepreneurs Focus on Valuation or Everything Else?  Jeff proffers a new term he calls the “promote,” in an effort to communicate the real value behind a deal and to take the focus off of pre-money valuation or post-money ownership.  It’s worth the read.

Finally, I thought David Feinleib’s article entitled When You Are the Product had some thoughful bearing on my previous entry Venture Conference Presentations.  He differentiates between pitching a customer (where you focus on the product you are selling) versus pitching an investor (where the focus is on selling yourself (and your company, market opportunity, team, model, etc.)).  One of my favorit points he makes is that it’s easy to forget that investors aren’t buying your product, they are buying a piece of your company.  So try and focus on the latter when you are pitching investors.