Got this from a presentation by David Murray of Cape Venture Partners, a Venture Capital fund which has invested in quite a few successful businesses. Was alerted by a comment about 10 seconds after I posted this (literally) that it was originally adapted from Guy Kawasaki, here and here. So duly credited.
Top ten lies entrepreneurs tell
1. “Our market is $X billion”
2. “We won’t need a second round of financing”
3. “A large contract with BigCo is signing next week”
4. “If we sell less than 50% of the company we still have control”
5. “All our estimates are very conservative”
6. “We don’t have any competition”
7. “No one else can do what we’re doing”
8. “[Big Company] is too slow to be a threat”
9. “Our technology will become the industry standard”
10. “We only need 1.5% of the market to become a billion dollar company”
No ad to show here.
Top ten lies VCs tell
1. I liked your company, but my partners didn’t”. (That’s a NO)
2. “If you get a lead, we will follow” (NO)
3. “Show us some traction, and we’ll invest”(NO)
4. “We love to co-invest with other VC’s”(No we don’t, we want it all if it’s good)
5. “We’re investing in your team” (But don’t cock it up!)
6. I have lots of bandwidth to dedicate to your company” (and the other 10 too)
7. “This is a vanilla term sheet” (but even a lawyer can’t understand it)
8. “We can open up doors for you at our client companies” (they actually hate him)
9. “We like early-stage investing” (but prove yourself first)
10. “There’s plenty of money out there” (but not for you
