♞ How investors analyze you

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How investors analyze you

Recently, I got into a little spat with someone on Twitter. I had tweeted about how you should never use a Google Drive link to share your deck as many founders forget to give access to the VC, and this often leads to your deck never being read.

Someone replied, saying that they felt that founders had a “right” to know who was reading their deck and that it was on the VC if they were too lazy to request access to see the deck.

This is a LOSER mindset. Here is why:

There are really two things that investors look for when they analyze pre-seed companies:

1. Your ability to provide value to customers

2. Your ability to provide value without friction

Friction is the key element here that many founders overlook. It’s easy to have business ideas; it’s a lot harder to build something and get someone to use it. A significant aspect of your founder's job is reducing that friction and making it easy for customers to get onboarded.

If you are introducing friction into the investing process, investors will believe this is your mindset. You would rather know who is reading your deck than make it easy for any investor to give you money. Logically, then, wouldn’t you rather collect a little more customer data instead of making it easy for customers to get onboarded?

Always consider value and friction when you make decisions, especially in the early stages of your company. It’s something that many VCs will look for and at the earliest stages of your business, when it’s hard to analyze the company, many investors will look at how you reduce friction and provide value in other areas of your business/life such as hiring, development, investing, managing, etc. to see if you are someone with the right mindset and attitude to win.

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Onwards and Upwards,

Liam Gill