All the Small Things
🎵 All the small things
True care, truth brings 🎵
OG startup advisors Blink-182 once waxed poetic about the importance of doing “all the small things.”
As with many things in life, the little things can have far more of an impact on your success when fundraising than you might expect. Many investors loudly proclaim that they don’t care what your pitch deck looks like, what you did before, or how you get introduced to them, but the reality is that first impressions matter.
Here are four small things that could cost you a new investor, plus one that could help you land one:
1. Spelling/Grammatical Mistakes
This one is a no brainer. There is absolutely, unequivocally no excuse to have spelling mistakes in your business communications today.
While this might seem unfair (particularly for founders for whom English is not their first language), there are so many tools available to ensure that your communications are free from mistakes that it’s just not defensible anymore.
This isn’t to say you can’t make a typo here or forget a comma there. But if you’re regularly sending emails, pitch decks or other materials filled with spelling or grammatical mistakes, it’s like going out in public without looking in the mirror.
2. A Gmail Address Instead of a Company Email Address
This one might seem trivial, but if your company is 6 months old and has a public website, why are you emailing me from your free Gmail account?
As an investor, I’m looking at your potential to be the CEO of a multi-billion dollar company. I need to know that you’re operating like a CEO today, not like someone who’s got a cute side project. So unless we were introduced using personal email addresses (which is actually a good thing), using a Gmail account to communicate with potential investors raises unnecessary questions, like:
Do you email potential users/customers from your Gmail address?
Or, worse, is this an indication that you haven’t been emailing any potential users/customers?
Does this imply that you’re not maintaining boundaries around company R&D, IP, etc.?
(Google and Microsoft both have lead generation tie-ups with major web hosting companies, so you can almost certainly get a couple of free email accounts if you’re trying to stay ultra cheap.)
3. Misaligned Headers / Different Fonts in Your Pitch Deck
I do not believe or support the idea that founders need to pay a designer to work on their pitch deck. However, I strongly believe that the attention-to-detail reflected in your pitch deck is an indicator of your attention-to-detail in other aspects of your business. For example:
Are headers in the same position on each slide?
Do you have the same fonts / font sizes / colors on each slide?
Do the numbers in your metrics match across slides?
Are the page numbers correct?
If you’re trying to raise money with a deck that doesn’t have basic cleanliness and hygiene taken care of, how am I to believe that your product or company will be any better? Moreover, how am I to believe that you’ll set the appropriate examples for your company as a founder?
A number of years ago, Dave Kellogg wrote a blog post titled Not in my Kitchen: Leaders as Norm-Setters. I wholeheartedly agree with Dave’s perspective that founders are the ultimate norm-setters for the companies they create. If my first impression from you is that attention-to-detail is not a priority, then I have no reason to believe that it will suddenly become one.
And in my experience, a lack of attention-to-detail is not a recipe for success.
4. Being Late to Zoom Meetings
I was raised in the church of “Early is on time. On time is late. Late is unacceptable.”
While I’ve certainly softened this stance since having kids, I absolutely take note when a founder I’m meeting with is late to a Zoom call. Notwithstanding technical issues (which, let’s be honest, happen all the time), showing up on time to fundraising meetings is incredibly important. Including when you’ve scheduled back-to-back meetings.
While it might seem like the right move to go over time with an engaged VC, many founders misinterpret an investor’s interest in the topic as interest in funding your company. So you might be giving too much time to an investor who’s just mining you for information, while leaving the one legitimately interested in investing hanging out to dry.
Paradoxically, insisting on keeping a meeting to time and cutting it off (“I’ve got a hard stop at 4:25 so that I can prep for my next call.”) is the real power move.
5. “Thank You” Notes
Many of you aren’t old enough to remember when sending someone a hand-written “thank you” note was common courtesy, but it used to be a thing. While that tradition has all but faded away, it can help you stick out from the fundraising crowd, while helping you to maintain control over your process.
Now, I’m not suggesting that you actually mail out hand-written “thank you” notes. Rather, at the end of each day, take 10 minutes to send a follow-up email to every investor you spoke with that day. Your emails should include:
A genuine “thank you” for the conversation, ideally with a personalized reference to something you discussed on the call (“thank you for X,” rather than just “thank you”)
A summary of key takeaways
A recap/reminder of agreed next steps
I would guess that fewer than 1% of founders I meet with send me a follow-up email after our call, but the ones who do absolutely go up a notch in my mind.
