Ask HN: What usually happens after a VC asks for a demo?

12 pointsposted 10 hours ago
by stijo

Item id: 46746742

2 Comments

brettgriffin

6 hours ago

If there was serious interest, they would taken a next step by now. They won't give you a hard no unless you're an absolute joke.

They will wait and see if there's any deal heat.

Are you talking to other funds? You need to talk to as many funds as possible in a 2-3 week period to create leverage. Do not talk to a single or small number of funds in a process[0]. Best case they will snake the round at a discount, worst case you'll give up a ton of leverage and kill the process.

[0] unless you have close relationships with a stable of funds. you do not.

malux85

7 hours ago

A day or two is nothing. Building these relationships takes time.

When I finished raising my pre-seed round I had a big list of investors that I had talked to, some a warm, some said no, some said yes. I always asked them if I could put them on my cool updated list, and then shared fun things with them (short emails - 4 sentences and a screenshot, hey look what we did!)

By the time it came to raise seed we were 2.5x oversubscribed in 2 weeks - because I had spent the previous year relationship building with all of them.

Remember VCs are reviewing a bunch of companies all at once, you are not the only thing they have to think about today.

Follow up in a few days, and send a short (20 seconds max) video attached in case they don’t have time to organise to see the demo.

VCs are busy so “do the work” for them, don’t ask a question - ask a question, anticipate the answer and then send the answer too.

These are long term relationships you are building so treat them as such.