NYC Entrepreneur Week events take-aways

From ‘Entrepreneurs Roundtable 13′ 4/22 with Albert Wenger (USV)
http://eroundtable13.eventbrite.com
and ‘Roadmap for the Entrepreneur’ panel 4/24 with Howard Morgan (First Round Capital), Albert Wenger (USV), Danny Schultz (DFJ Gotham), Gil Beyda (Genacast Ventures) and Santo Politi (Spark Capital):
http://nycentweekentpanel.eventbrite.com/

* In 2005, VC-backed companies accounted for 17% of GDP & 9% of private-sector employment - so the VC decision process is very important for the economy in general

* First Round Capital gets 2500 plans a year, 500 of these get 1-hour calls, 100 get due-diligence, 20 get funded (0.8% of all the applicants)

* First Round Capital has a CEO-only list of their portfolio companies, a very efficient channel for their companies to get help, suggestions, data, referrals.

* Worst thing in a board meeting is a “surprise”!

* Marketing is all about removing objections to your pitch. While you are pitching, think like the investor.

* The best way to get funding is to ‘not need it’

* VCs help their portfolio companies but they don’t want to feel like they need to help them constantly to get the business going.

* In the current economic environment, deals take longer, rounds are smaller and there are fewer angels (no more extra money because of the stock market)

* Metrics are very important. Track everything. Also present a ‘cohort analysis’, not just active users (1 month) numbers. Cohort analysis show that a user who signed up in January, is still using the service in May.

* There are 13M available tracks available for sale online, 10M of them haven’t sold once in the past year.

* VCs do not like industries with gate keepers where a startup would need permission from a gate keeper (like in health care). Mobile software used to be like this, not anymore.

* Amazon had 35% of their sales through their ‘recommendation’ feature.

* VCs sometimes actively go out there to find ‘a company’. USV invested in ‘indeed.com’ because they went out there and looked for a company with their business model.

* 2007 to 2009, infrastructure costs have come down by 10x.

* Find your value proposition. Targeting many features may end up looking unfocused/not useful.