One of my most important responsibilities as a VC is recruiting appropriate co-investors and follow-on investors. See How VCs structure a syndicate and recruit coinvestors for more on this.
I’ve provided here a template for sharing profiles of your companies with other VCs. At every VC where I’ve worked, I’ve created a set of short company descriptions in the format below. I regularly meet with other VCs, and based on their criteria, I share with them whichever portfolio companies fit their areas of interest.
I suggest bucketing your companies as follows, with implications for what you would do with each:
- Actively raising and seeking lead other than [our firm]-> Intro to other VCs.
- Actively raising, has a lead investor other than [our firm], and seeking coinvestors -> Possibly do SPV.
- Actively raising, [our firm] is the lead. -> Intro to other VCs, and to LPs who might invest in an SPV.
- Not actively raising, but a good company that will represent us well. Will entertain conversations with advisors, new investors, etc., on an ad-hoc basis. -> Bring them up when you meet people who will resonate with what they do.
- Possible secondary opportunity. -> Intro to secondary investors. Unlikely to be SPV unless considered a ‘hot’ company.
- Lost faith, don’t want to expose other investors who might throw good money after bad. -> Ignore.
Every one-paragraph summary of a company should ideally have:
- Company name and website.
- 1-2 sentence elevator pitch. Note the pitch should explain what they actually do preferably using the Mad Libs format: “My company, [NAME], is developing [A DEFINED OFFERING], to help [DEFINED AUDIENCE], [SOLVE A PROBLEM], with [SECRET SAUCE].”
- 1 sentence with most exciting metric from their growth
- Ideally revenues and other financial metrics if we can include that
- Fundraising history summary, including notable current investors and last round valuation.
- Current fundraising status and date last fundraised
- Headquarters city
- Crunchbase link
Here’s a sanitized version of a template email to share with other VCs.
TEMPLATE DOCUMENT FOR SHARING INVESTMENT OPPORTUNITIES WITH OTHER VCs
Subject line: Relevant Portfolio Companies
[name],
I enjoyed our conversation. As promised, I took a look through our portfolio to see which companies best fit your investment interests. I’ve included below a brief description. If you would like to learn more, I’m glad to make an introduction to the CEO.
– Drop Technologies*: The fastest-growing mobile rewards program. Drop surfaces personalized offers based on the way you spend, leveraging their deep insights into your debit and credit card data. Toronto. https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/drop-loyalty#/entity
Fundraising history: March 2019: announced Series B raise. Jan 2018: Raised $21m Series A. Notable current investors include NEA, Portag3 Ventures, HOF Capital, and ffVC, White Star Capital. Requires double opt-in intro.
* I have a financial interest in these companies.
