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Fundraising Story - Don't Use PDFs!
Read time 1.9 minutes.
Recently, I’ve had a bunch of clients raising capital and today, I wanted to share a story from one specific company.
This company was aiming to raise by the end of November. They followed the traditional strategy of sending dozens of emails to VCs. The company had a unique technology, and some of the common feedback that they got was to explain the technology more clearly in their deck.
I advised strongly against this (story for another day), but they did it anyway. They updated their deck, sent it out to 50+ more VCs..
A couple days later he gets an email back. Awesome right!.. NO! DISASTER!!!
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The reply they got said that the VC was invested in a competitor so they would have to pass.
Suddenly the founder called me panicked. They have just sent a deck with the details of their new technology to a VC who is invested in a competitor. Worst of all, they sent it as a PDF so they can’t even remove that investor’s access to the deck.
So now three years of R&D, 100k+ of the founders own money is all at risk because they sent a PDF outlining their invention to a competitor.
The lesson: Don’t used PDFs. Always use a link when sharing a deck with investors, it allows you to (i) Revoke access and (ii) Update the deck. These are key advantages you should never give away just for the convenience of a PDF.
Do you send you pitch deck as a PDF? |
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