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.
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
To make this manual process more efficient, I’ve met with companies working to productize sharing deals with other investors, e.g., Totem* and Signal by NFX. I’m also very interested in companies trying to create marketplaces for private companies, e.g., Axial and Equityzen. Though these tools can be helpful to the syndication process, I believe it will largely remain a relationship-based process for some time to come.
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.
