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Most founders deem that their relationship with their board will be adversarial and combative. I assume that the founders must get sleepless nights before the board meeting. Maybe it provides the founder flashbacks to the nights spent they spent rolling their beds as they tried to present their school report card to their stricter parent, usually their dad.

Why do I think that?

The creative ways I see founders avoiding calling (forget conducting) board meetings as if it were the plague. Founders drum up excuses for delaying the board meetings, much like my classmates and I did to avoid submitting our signed and acknowledged report cards. Founders get sick; then a family member gets sick, then the ICU and next the morgue. Next when the health issues run out, then the team members are blamed; the reporting systems cop the blame – the list is endless. It is comical to witness the founder’s unnecessary creativity. However, the board is not a founder’s dad, waiting to rap them and it does not need to be that way.

That start-up boards must not have an adversarial relationship with the founders. This relationship should not disintegrate into that abyss is the responsibility of the investor board member and the founder.

For starters, the board must not get into the day-to-day working of the company unless there is a crisis, and the board must over-ride the management – it is rare but required. How can a founder avoid this situation is to be honest, in the founder’s hands.

A first step to building trust in the board-founder relationship is for the founder to get into the habit of organizing, conducting and following-up on productive board meetings.

• A board meeting must be conducted every quarter – at the very least.
• Some start-ups may require monthly board meetings, but a long-term plan of conducting monthly board meetings is onerous – on the founder and their board.

An important distinction that many founders fail to make is that a board meeting is not an investment pitch, but neither is it the investor update. A board meeting’s purpose is to get into the meat of things that the founders are working on versus the sizzle that sold to current and prospective investors.

If you, as a founder, are confused about what to discuss at your board meeting, I believe that Mark Suster’s How to Prepare for a Board Meeting to Make Sure you Crush It is a must-read for you.

Essential points that Mark delves into are the importance of a well-thought-out agenda, a solid deck and providing enough time to your board members to prepare for the meeting.

Now, if you’re scratching your head on what goes into a board deck, then Bryan Schreier’s post on Sequoia Capital’s website, aptly titled, Preparing a Board Deck should be in your reading list. 

A start-up founder that has an adversarial or a laissez-faire relationship with its board members is losing the plot. The best situation that a founder could wish for is a well-functioning board is their sounding board and guide for the road ahead. The board gives the founder a third party and a bird’s eye perspective on their venture’s progress because founders lose their objectivity in the day to day function of their ventures.

But it is important to note that the responsibility of creating the right board relationship must begin from the founder and supported by their board members – not the other way around.

No one can doubt that the Indian PE/VC ecosystem is going through a golden run. The amount of money flowing into the ecosystem is breaking records –records set just the previous year! If I narrow the PE/VC down to just “start-ups” then Indian start-ups have raised $11.3 billion this year – up from $10.5 billion raised last year – the good times are truly here.

This massive influx of money and strong tailwinds make it seem as though raising capital is getting easier. But, with the number of start-ups growing as fast (if not faster) than the money supply, the real picture for a start-up raising money today is – disconcertingly different. The discussion of what metrics does it take to raise a round, what the different stage VCs focus on when you raise, etc. is a polarizing topic. One that I regularly have now with founders who are raising, founders who have raised and with funders of all stages – but there isn’t a silver bullet.

Therefore, when Yuki Kawamura shared Pear VC’s report, aptly titled, Navigating the New Seed Landscape, he could not have sent it at a more opportune time. Mar Hershenson, Managing Partner of Pear VC, created this report analyzing the US VC ecosystem but there are several parallels we can draw for our ecosystem here. For example:  

• It confirms something that seed investors have long known, i.e., the time, amount and metrics required to raise a Series A round has increased, therefore;
  • The money needed to get a venture ready for Series A has also increased
  • Series A investors want to see positive unit economics and traction before putting in growth rounds
• Traction has a direct correlation to valuation
• Second time and successful founders get a premium valuation
• Where you locate your start-up does affect its initial valuation

There are several other learnings in the report, but the one slide that stuck with me is:

• A seed investor (like me) backs the team
• The angel investor backs the traction, and
• The Series A investor backs the market.

The report then gets into further details as to what your start-up must emphasize when you are raising a new round. It provides a founder the VC view on where your venture must be before attempting to raise that the Seed, Angel, or Series A round. I believe that this presentation is manna for founders. I Whatsapp’d it to my founders in the morning. Now I share it with you!

In the past several weeks, I have been astonished at the size of seed rounds that founders expect to raise in their first round. My jaw hits the table when a founder blindsides me with requests to raise seed rounds of $1 million to as high as $3-4 million!*

These are the start-ups that have

• Opened their doors for business within the previous 12-18 months.
• Have an ARR of less than two crore rupees ($300k).

Surprised at the massive requirement of capital, we go through their financial model. Within a few minutes of looking through the model, the spreadsheet would give out a chilling fact:

The founders first decided the amount they were raising; then, they decided how to utilise the amount that is raised!

It may seem like smart scheme when pitched to novice investors, but it is a foolhardy attempt to do that to an investor with experience.

For instance, to show full utilization of the amount the founders pad certain numbers. So, a close inspection of the fund utilization plan exposes the founder’s true intentions, i.e. that they wanted a reverse calculated an ego-boosting valuation for themselves. To achieve that goal they were willing to misrepresent facts. How does a founder come back from that image?

The good news is that – there is a better way.

My advice for founders that are creating their fundraising plans is to start with a well thought out answer to a famous Peter Thiel question –

What is the one thing you know to be correct but very few agree with you?

In simple words, what do you need to prove to your team, your advisors, investors, etc. to elevate their belief in your idea? Whatever you need to do to gain their confidence that is the goal of your fundraising efforts.

For example, if everyone in your inner circle does not think that your company cannot sell x number of your whacky widgets in a specified period – then that is precisely the thing you must prove! Your goal must be specific, measurable, attainable, and realistic, and time-bound so that you aren’t on a wild goose chase.

Second, estimate the time and the resources (servers, people, space, travel, etc) required to achieve your goal. Pay close attention that your estimations do not have un-utilized or under-utilized resources. In fact, I advocate allocating 20% fewer resources than your start-up needs. It forces your team to innovate, after all – scarcity is the mother of innovation!

Third, figure out the exact cost of your resources over the period of their requirements. This exercise is a crucial step. Because if you had correctly estimated the resources and the time they’re required, you will (now) have the EXACT amount you must raise to achieve your goal.  

Fourth, add 25% top of the number you had in the previous step. The extra amount is your buffer, i.e. it is the extra cushion you’ve kept to account for any mistakes you may have made in your calculations. The extra cushion gives you the breathing room to commit errors – an essential fail-safe for an early-stage startup.

Now you have the exact amount your start-up needs, not a paisa more and not a paisa less. Next, go out there and raise this amount!

This proper prior preparation will give you the confidence to answer questions about the “why” behind your fundraising efforts. Your confidence will impress your prospective investors as you come off as a professional founder instead of a novice founder who thought they could pull the wool over the eyes of a seasoned investor.

As an investor that has sat on the other side of the table for almost eight years, this level of preparation and maturity from a founder is rare. But, when I meet a prepared founder it invokes confidence that the founders will utilize my precious and expensive capital judiciously. In fact, I may be swayed to give a premium valuation to such well-prepared founders – exactly what the founder wanted but now he/she earns it with respect!

* – Oddly enough, the high expectations were from founders who spoke in millions of dollars instead of crores of rupees. It ignites the patriotic fervor residing in Vinod – a sight to watch!

Hey founders, today I’m going to address a crucial topic: When to update your investors with bad news. If you’re an entrepreneur and running a business, you will have to give bad news at some point.

There are many ways to give bad news. One of them is not to give any news at all, let everything go down, and then explain why you have only ruins and not a building on fire. This method isn’t recommended, but some people choose it – I don’t.

There are minor issues or bad news that can be managed in your monthly and quarterly updates. Like missing your quarterly numbers by 3-4%, or if you’re having a tough time recruiting people, or if a particular distributor who was contributing a large part of the business dropped you for reasons unknown or customer complaints. These are the kinds of things you can manage in your monthly and quarterly updates.

However, certain kinds of news shouldn’t be neglected. These should be communicated to the investors immediately. If a co-founder has left, or one of the co-founders has been diagnosed with severe disease and will not be available for the next 6-8 months, or your fundraising efforts are falling through, or a significant client that contributes a substantial chunk of the profit has left. These are the kinds of situations that need to be communicated to the investors immediately, preferably not on e-mail.

What I recommend is organizing a conference call or an in-person meeting. Explain what is going on to the investors face to face, in a way that is direct with no sugar coating. Be humble about the fact that things have gone wrong. Don’t try to play up things to avoid the investors being angry at you. If the situation is terrible, investors have a right to be irritated and will point out things that could have gone better. You should take criticism in your stride as you’re expected to execute successfully. Take responsibility, be direct, and you’ll find that investors will probably come back with solutions for you to manage the mess.

In adverse situations, you should have a turnaround plan. I would recommend having one if you’re going to have a face to face meeting. If you don’t have one, let the investors know and get back to them in a few days or a few weeks. There may be some questions the investors have, for which you may not have the answers. I would recommend not making up turnaround plans on the spot. If you don’t have the answers, tell them. Mention that you’re going to get back to them in 5, 7 or 10 days (or whatever number of days you believe you need) but ensure that you keep those promises.

Delivering bad news should not be difficult. It’s only tricky when you don’t want to give bad news, and you feel hiding is the best way forward. But it doesn’t solve anything. In fact, it only leads to the problem of getting bigger. If hypothetically, the company shuts down, and investors find out that you knew in advance, you could find yourself in a hot legal soup.

I’ll leave you with that, and I would love to know how some of you guys have shared bad news in the past. Also, if you have tips for other entrepreneurs, do share them in the comments.

I did several part-time jobs while in college but the only part-time job that I held for all the four years of my degree was as a salesman in a jewelry store. The managing partner of the store and still like an elder brother to me, Haresh, gave me this book, How to sell anything to anybody by Joe Girard. Haresh considered this book to be his bible on sales, and once I read it, it was my sales bible too. However, this book is not about sales.

This book is about creating a systematic approach to

• Recruiting new customers without burning a hole in your pocket
• Getting your customers to like you
• Getting your customers emotionally attached to the product
• Attaining (and maintaining) a high closing percentage
• Engaging with your customers even if they don’t buy right away
• Engaging with your customers after you have made the sale 
  • I wrote a blog on how car brands do the exact opposite
• Getting referrals from customers, friends, family and service providers (including your barber!) to grow your business
• Creating a team around you to ensure you get the highest return for your own time

Joe Girard sold 13,001 cars in his sales career. That is a staggering number because his sales career ended in 1978 i.e. way before the internet; WhatsApp or Facebook made it easy to reach out to a customer.

Joe was profiling his customers, listening to their needs, adjusting his approach to sell his customer. He also made several sales by reaching out to his customer just at the time that their car was ready to be replaced!

How did he know when to call? He kept all this valuable information on his customer in a physical CRM i.e., way before Salesforce, Dynamics, PipeDrive, etc. made record-keeping infinitesimally easier. 

It is for these reasons that this book is a must-read for all founders whether they handle the sales function or not because as I had mentioned before this is a book about creating systems. Therefore I recommend that every founder know how to support the sales function whether they sit in tech, operations, HR, or fundraising.

I have re-read this book several times in my career. Most recently, I re-read this book to create a system to approach, engage, and recruit LPs for my fund. The system ensured that only 13% of the 115 crores we have in commitments came from distribution relationships. Therefore, in the remaining 87% of the cases, I utilized Joe’s system to recruit, involve, and close LPs. My team used a CRM to manage follow-ups and we created new content to reach out to our LPs.

This approach saved us almost one crore a year in paying out fees to distributors, which is a massive cost saving for a MicroVC fund like ours. What is the investment?

Rs. 280 and 8 hours of reading time.

You don’t require a finance degree to explain that these are fantastic returns on your investment and time.

Now it’s up to you…

Recently, I had a long conversation with someone about the challenges I faced working with an obstinate founder that they referred to me. The person countered that the founder was passionate about their business idea, and I misunderstood their passion. I disagreed with their assessment.

During the week, I have contemplated the difference between obstinate and passionate. I realize that it was difficult to separate the two. Obstinate is often misunderstood to be obsessive; a term often used to describe Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Brian Chesky, Elon Musk or Jack Ma.

I love obsessive founders. I considered myself an obsessive founder. I am probably even more obsessive as an investor. Why VCs love obsessive founders is well explained by Mark Suster in this Medium post titled Why I Look for Obsessive and Competitive Founders. If you are a VC investor, then you should read this post.

Moral: Obsessive is good, but obsessive is not obstinate.

Obstinate is what Oxford defines as stubbornly refusing to change one’s opinion or chosen course of action, despite attempts to persuade one to do so.

Obstinate founders can take a fantastic thing and reduce it to rubble because their need to be right is more important than their need to win. It is the classic winning the battle but losing the war syndrome.

Gordon Tredgold wrote a wonderful article explaining the difference between stubbornness and determination, aptly titled Don’t Confuse Stubbornness with Determination.

In it, he provided a list of signs that can warn a founder whether their stubbornness is becoming an issue.

• If you never win and you never quit, you’re an idiot
• Will power vs. Won’t power
• Remember that your goals must be measurable
• Think about results
• Consider adaptability
• Your goal will remain the same, but your plan for achieving it will be different

His suggestions are absolutely banging on. I encourage you to read the article if you constantly find yourself butting heads with prospective and/or current investors.

Over the weekend, I was a guest of Baljinder Sharma, a serial entrepreneur and a highly respected individual in the India & Africa startup scene. He put together the first India Africa Entrepreneurship & Investment Summit in Mauritius.

The event started as an idea to create a bridge between two ecosystems that houses over 1/3^rd of the world’s population. It culminated in a 2-day event attended by over two hundred illustrious participants of the African & Indian early-stage ecosystem.  

The number of close relationships forged at the event is the barometer of success for such an event. On that scale alone – this event was a resounding success. I made several new friends, some from India and many from Africa. I will strongly encourage Baljinder to make the event a permanent annual feature for both ecosystems.

On the first day of the event, I was on a panel with an impressive list of panelists viz, Stephen Newton, Jonathan Mazumdar, Eric Osiakwan. Atim Kabra deftly and expertly moderated the panel channelizing our experiences and energy into a coherent narrative. Our discussion topic – the role of mentors and incubators in our respective ecosystems. Our discussion on mentorship got extremely engaging so much so that we did not enter into any meaningful conversation on incubation.

My co-panelists came up with a host of discussion points, but we unanimously agreed that the title of “the mentor” was thrown around very casually in our respective ecosystems. Often, service providers are self-anointed mentors, and their misrepresentation can have disastrous effects for the founders, their startups, and their investors.

On Sunday night as I boarded the flight back to Mumbai, I put down those discussion points that resonated with me; here is that list.

A mentor should not cost the company money.

This point is not to say that the mentor should work pro-bono. However, mentors that offer hourly/weekly/monthly/annual payment plans are service providers. If your proposed mentor charges money to meet you for an evaluation – please be smart and avoid them. 

A mentor’s role is to guide, not to become the founder.

I have committed this mistake a few times, so it hits home. Many times, founders start abdicating the decision-making role to the mentor, and there are several times the mentor starts getting too deeply involved. The mentor is not the CEO or a co-founder, but neither are they above the CEO or the Founders.

If you have crossed this line in your mentor-mentee relationship already – it is time to scale it back maybe even take a break. 

A mentor’s job is to do /advise you on what is best for you, not to make you happy.

This point is a personal favorite.

The mentor’s role is like that of a coach – they are present for the overall success of your company, not your success alone. Therefore, they must offer advice which is best for the company.

A self-respecting mentor will promptly quit if they get the message that their presence is to be a rubber stamp to your whims.   

A founder should have multiple mentors.

This learning was new to me. A founder should seek out multiple mentors that can help them with different aspects of their business or challenges. As the startup grows, there should be a churn in the mentors with new mentors taking over from the mentors that have finished their role/utility.

A good mentor stands on the side-lines while you make mistakes.

An extension of point 2. Experienced mentors sit on the side-line while you make mistakes even if they could help you avoid them. The lesson of letting you experience failure and learning how to prevent future mistakes is more important than the experience of getting saved by the mentor.

A good mentor will warn the founder of the challenges but leave the final decision on them.

The mentor’s role is to guide the founder through their decisions, but in the end, the founder is the one that must pull the trigger. When a mentor starts making decisions for the founder stops taking responsibility for the results.  

It would be best if you chose mentors that have substantial previous experience in the areas you need help

If you want to learn how to build a billion-dollar startup, who would you go to for help? The founder that built billion-dollar startups a couple of times or the founder struggling to get their startup out of their garage? 

Even though this sounds like a simple point reiterated – I am surprised how many times founders commit this mistake.

The best mentors only take on mentoring projects that challenge them.

Good mentors get sought, but they aren’t running after the money. They are looking for a challenge. A challenge that will stretch them and help them grow thereby (and in most cases) helping the mentor and the mentee.

Mentors that are running after money will accept any project, regardless of whether it intrigues them are not the right choice for you and your startup.  

The very best mentors get involved before the founders know that they need them and leave before the founders question their existence.

An involved mentor that is “in-sync” with their mentee knows precisely when to increase their involvement and when to decrease or terminate their relationship. A mentor that must be asked to leave has stopped paying attention.

It would be best if you convinced the mentor that you are worth their time investment, not the other way around

When a mentor is chasing you, explaining why you “need” their mentoring or pestering you to “sign-up” with them, they are a service provider. Service providers have other motives driving them but they are most likely not in line with your mentoring requirements.

The best mentors are so busy with their projects. They place a high value on their time. Therefore, you must convince them that you are worth the opportunity cost of their time – without using money as the offset.

My takeaway from the panel: Choosing is a mentor isn’t rocket science, but neither is it a game of roulette. Choose wisely through the generous application of common sense.

I am re-reading How to Sell Anything to Anybody by Joe Girard (book review coming soon).

Earlier today, I finished his chapter on Winning After the Close wherein Joe talks about the importance of ensuring customer satisfaction AFTER completing a sale. He gives examples of how he goes out of his way to ensure that his customers sing his praises to their friends and family. He links the importance of satisfying his customer to the Girard’s Law of 250, i.e., each person has a direct connect to 250 people; therefore, an unhappy customer can directly influence 250 people. Consequently a salesperson or a business that disappoints two customers a week will have 26,000 negative influence every year!

Why is it important to follow what Joe Girard says? For starters, the man still holds the Guinness Book of World Records for being the most successful car salesman in history. This man was selling six cars a day (on average) while the average salesman struggled to sell one. He was out making $500,000 a year selling cars in the 1970s, i.e., eight times the per capita income in the US of A – TODAY!

So yes, when that man says something – it is worth our time and attention.

I am coming back to my point for the post today.

I just bought my first car in India. It was an important moment for my team and me. We were ecstatic on getting the car delivered on Tuesday evening. However, instead of reveling that moment and remembering it for the years to come, all we cannot forget is how the salespeople delivered the car with just enough fuel to get the vehicle to the closest petrol pump!

The saleswoman blamed the empty fuel tank on some dealership policy of ensuring that customers get a bone dry fuel tank. I could not disagree more with her firm, her firm’s strategy, and finally with the saleswoman herself. If she was so embarrassed about her firm’s stingy policy, she could have ensured a happy customer by filling up the tank herself – she would make more than the Rs. 2200 it cost me to fill the tank.

Buying a car is one of the most important purchases in one’s life. I can still remember, like yesterday, the first car I bought with the money I earned by working during the first summer semester in college – a 1996 Mercury Sable with a v6 engine. I was so proud of the car even though it was six years old at the time of purchase. The moment gives me goosebumps even today.

Then 17 years later I buy my first car in India, a Honda Civic, and it is an expensive car (for my standards), but it was delivered as though the dealership was running out of money. It left a sour taste and you won’t have to think hard whether this dealership (Arya Honda) will be recommended by me to anyone. The answer is no.

I must re-emphasize that a happy customer is the best salesperson. He/she will boast about his/her positive experiences to their closest network. On the other hand, an unhappy customer will tell anyone that would like to hear him/her of their negative experiences and feeling cheated by a car dealership. Unfortunately, these car dealerships operate under old maxims therefore continue to misread their customers. Any start-up founder that is reading this post should not.

Your customer whether they are B2C, B2B, B2B2C or B2B2B or B2B2B2C (and so on) must be happy with their purchase of your goods or services. To hide behind the veil of corporate policies is the old way of doing business, and you must ensure that your salespeople are sufficiently empowered to ensure post-sales customer satisfaction, at all costs! It is just as important that those negative experiences are corrected by changing policies and processes.

The process in which the company acquires a customer, gives them lousy experience, and allows the salespeople to blame an insane corporate policy is a sure indication of a deeper rot settled in that organisation.

A rot that every entrepreneur should guard their companies against the cost of all their corporate policies.

It has been fourteen days since VG Siddhartha took his life. In that time, the entrepreneurial ecosystem has heard arguments from several vantage points to understand the cause of the stress that led to his untimely demise. It is stomach-churning and thought-provoking stuff.

Various arguments attempted to place the cause of VG’s entrepreneurial distress onto a multitude of issues. His close political affiliations, the stress that different business bailouts had put on his balance sheet and even his battles with the income tax department. His balance sheet was funded using debt and private equity; therefore, the private equity guys were to blame as well. However, to place the blame on any one person or phenomenon is to oversimplify a very complex issue i.e., the effects of entrepreneurial stress. 

The one silver lining of this somber episode is that it has got us all talking about entrepreneurial stress. It is a real thing, and there is an excellent chance that an entrepreneur close to you is under this stress right now. Yes, even the most successful ones.

In the Indian ecosystem, a successful start-up founder is treated as a demi-god. The media can quickly relate that entrepreneur into a Tony Stark-type invincible personality – capable of resolving any situation and turning almost anything they touch into gold. The price of this success is steep because the lens of failure is brutal. Ask any of the high-flying entrepreneurs that witness a reversal of fate – the fall from grace can be cruel and lonely. 

The truth is that an entrepreneur undergoes the same level of stress as that of a high-performance athlete. Another reality is that this stress will not vanish. 

The first step to dealing with entrepreneurial stress is to admit its existence. This step is most difficult because it hacks away the cloak of invincibility that entrepreneurs take painstaking effort to build. However, unless we admit that this stress exists, we cannot act on its causes. Ray Zinn wrote a great post on Stress and the Entrepreneur that delves deeper into this.

The next step is to identify the factors causing stress. There are internal factors that the entrepreneur can control and external ones that they cannot. It could be the nature of the business (like running a stockbroking platform), an environmental factor (like the transit time from home to office) or a personality trait (like procrastination and putting off decisions). The factors that can be addressed, should be acted on immediately and earnestly. The factors that cannot be addressed can be overcome through several methods, which high-performance entrepreneurs utilize to channelize their stress positively.

Lastly, once the stress factors have been identified and dealt with, an entrepreneur needs to build a core group of people to fall back on. The people invited to this core (aka inner circle) play a critical role, and they need to be educated on the things not to do.  

This post is one of the toughest blogs I have written because I have had my personal experiences with entrepreneurial stress, which kept clouding my arguments. I kept reverting to the times in my career when I stared from the cliff of despair into the depths of failure. I know today what I did not back then. Even then, I sometimes find myself feeling overwhelmed, overworked, and slightly burnt out. It usually shows up with the burning sensation in my eyes, persistent pain in my back and a marked drop in my physical stamina. 

Initially, I did not know that it was stress. When I could self-diagnose, I took a short vacation, reduced my meetings load or delegated more. The awareness helped with resolution. However, the VG Siddhartha episode has awakened me to change my stance from a reactive one to a proactive one.

So should you.

It is easy to figure out when founders have been pitching for investments without any success and for a while. The pitches become nonstop monologues that will end at the allotted time or when abrupted by questions from us.

Naturally, the founders overcompensate to avoid failing on another pitch. They try different tactics to avoid disappointment, but a series of rejections can take its toll on a founder’s psyche, and slowly the tactics become bad habits. Many founders are not aware that these bad habits are creating a vortex that is attracting further rejections. What seems intuitively correct is practically fatal.

So here are a few tips for founders that will help them in their next pitch.

• Eliminate the problem areas in your pitch deck

If you’re getting stuck at the same point in your presentation, then it may be an excellent time to eliminate that slide. If that is a slide that you cannot eliminate then use an example to get your point across.

Doing the same thing again and again but expecting a different result is the definition of insanity- for a good reason!

• Speak at a measured space and

The two significant signs of low confidence are speaking in a high pitch and speaking at a fast pace. The good news is that there is an easy fix for this.

1. Record yourself pitching so that you hear the difference between your regular and confident voice and that you use during pitching.
2. Do test pitches where you speak in a tone much lower than your standard baritone and speak at slower than your average space.  
3. Write down, “breathe” at a spot where you can see it during your pitch and breathe.

These exercises may seem stupid to you, but you have to ensure that your message is getting into our heads. When you talk fast at a high pitch and without taking a breath,  the only thing I’m thinking is – something is wrong with this business!

• Act as if

Yes you may have just enough money left to take the Uber ride home

Yes your core team may be on the verge of quitting

Yes your parents are hounding you to take that job you hate so you can make ends meet and;

Yes all this stress is tearing you apart inside

However, those are your problems that we are not aware of right now. During your pitch, we should not be feeling the weight of the issues we’re inheriting. Instead, we want to dream about the promise your opportunity holds, and we want to know you are the guy that will get us to that promised land.

Therefore, clear your head before you start a presentation. I watch specific videos or listen to particular music that gets me in the right frame a mind before I make my pitch for investment. I force myself into a mental state where all the issues in my personal or professional life don’t get reflected in my pitch for investment. For my investors, I am ‘the guy’ wearing the confidence of the success, and a bank account overflowing with money.

Confidence is infectious and FOMO is not a myth!

• Do not brag or lie

Asking you to act as if may seem like I am encouraging you to lie or brag but let me be clear that that is far from the truth.

A successful person does not need to stamp their success everwhere, and neither do they have to remind people of their success. Most of the successful people I know underplay their success, displaying palpable confidence that is felt but not witnessed.  

Therefore when founders start bragging about meetings with Saif, Sequoia, Lightspeed or well-known super angels in a feeble effort to create FOMO they are pulling the rug from under them. We can safely estimate at what stage of the start-up’s development these top funds will take an interest in investing in them.

Therefore, bragging about meeting x, y or z, when you don’t have a POC, is a sign of your immaturity in understanding how the venture capital ecosystem works. To misunderstand their interest in taking a meeting is a sign that desperation is getting to you – not something you wish to convey to a potential investor!

Act as if is an attitude, a demeanor, and a mental state. There isn’t any space for lies and show off when you are acting as if.