Three things not to pitch to VCs
October 18th, 2007 by Benjamin KuoBusinessweek has a great interview with VC Josh Kopelman about three things not to pitch VCs. The funny thing is I was just at a screening session for VentureNet, and the exact same three “don’t pitch these” came up in a conversation with a number of local VCs on the committee. Kopelman mentions:
1. Business plans that depend on getting acquired by Google (GOOG).
2. Revenue models that revolve around advertising from Google AdSense.
3. Businesses that piggyback on Facebook instead of picking up where Google left off.
The other big one which VCs (at least here) seem to be very tired of, is the “think of us as Facebook meets Google meets Skype meets MySpace!” (or any other combination of popular Web 2.0 site). You could almost come up with a randomly generated chain of Web 2.0 companies (Flickr + de.licio.us + eBay!) (Youtube + Upcoming + Blogger + Grouper!) and turn up a startup trying to describe itself as such.
