4. 简化推介书

    一次产品演示要比演示文稿（PPT）有用50倍。一个是对事物的描述，另一个则是这个事物本身。产品是我们的食物；为我们提供给养……我们不喜欢让创业者花大量时间来制作演示文稿。如果看到一份演示文稿的名称含有“第36版”的字样，我们会受到惊吓。

    我们喜欢的东西没有固定的模式，但我们可能会用2-5分钟来看推介书，然后决定是否和这家公司见面。那样的演示文稿有多少页呢？要看情况而定，但如果你需要20页内容详尽的演示文稿来讲述自己的故事，那就意味着你的故事需要修改。在我们投资的公司中，约有五分之一的公司在获得投资前根本就没有拿出推介书——通常是因为它们的产品本身已经很能说明问题，或者我们对这个团队或这个行业非常熟悉，所以不需要推介书。

    5. 人们对你有何评价？

    我们极端信任参考信息，对于那些开诚布公、毫不掩饰地和我们分享其观点的朋友、同事以及合伙人，我们都欠他们一个人情。我们会设法避开那些毫无意义的问题（比如“他们的优势和弱点在哪里？”）。相反，我们重点关注的东西能帮助我们决定是否为创业者提供支持，这些问题包括：

    • 他和你认识的其他创业者相比怎么样？排名前10%？5%？1%？

    • 哪些东西让你相信他与众不同？

    • 如果你是我们，而且你决定对这家公司投资，你觉得他在哪些方面最需要帮助？

    我们会尽可能多的寻找参考信息。

    ----------------------------

    不知道其他风投公司是不是也有类似的内部文件；如果有的话，不知道它们会不会也在网上公布这些文件，这是一件很有意思的事。（财富中文网）

    译者：Charlie 

    4. Sweep the deck

    A demo is 50 times more useful than slides. One is a description of a thing, the other is the thing itself. Product is our sustenance; feed us... We don't like the idea of entrepreneurs spending lots of time making presentations. When we see "v36" in the filename of a presentation, it terrifies us.

    There is no standard format we like, but we probably spend 2-5 minutes reading a deck when we are deciding whether to meet a company. How many slides? Depends, but if you need 20 detailed pages to tell your story, your story needs work. In roughly one-fifth of our portfolio companies, we never saw a deck before investing -- usually because the product spoke so loudly for itself, or we knew the team and business so well we didn't need a deck.

    5. What are people saying about you?

    We put great faith in the value of reference calls, and we owe a debt to the friends, colleagues, and partners who are willing to share open, unvarnished views. We try to skip nonsense questions ("what are their strengths and weaknesses") and instead focus on things that will help us decide whether to back a founder:

    • How does this person compare to other founders you've known? Top 10%? 5%? 1%?

    • What makes you believe this person is extraordinary?

    • If you were us, and decided to invest in the company, in what areas would you guess this person would need the most help?

    We call as many references as we can find.

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    It should be interesting to see if other VC firms have similar internal documents and, if so, whether or not they'll post them online.