风投基金首次募资实战宝典

同时，我也可以回报给他们一些东西。富人都想用钱来换取趣味——不然要钱有什么用？当你向下一个重要目标投资时，就算动用的资金不多，你仍然会得到有趣的故事。你可以指着手机上的应用程序说：“做这个程序的人用的是我的资金。”比起拥有一家床垫公司、把制造业务外包，在宴会上聊起这些事情要有意思得多。

    话虽如此，之前建立的关系也只能让你走到这里。熟人提供的资金在我的基金里只占10%左右。这一点让我有点意外。我一直以为熟人支持我的可能性要比陌生人大，但其实并不是所有人都会投资于基金，而且大多数熟人都只提供了天使投资级别的资金，而且总额也不大。我的基金中，有一半资金来自三个实体，另一半来自47名个人。我需要的是数额较大的资金，因此，对于我本以为会解囊相助但没有这样做的人，让他们冒冷汗并没有什么意义。继续前进，尽量不要把这些记在心里。

    我得到的最大教训就是，我在那些“大款”身上耗费了太多时间，这让我浪费了整整四、五个月。一些重量级投资人很早就找到我说他们感兴趣，但我没能估计出他们提供资金的可能性，也没能推算出完成募集的时间——就像《销售秘籍101》（Sales 101）所说的那样。一位投资者没能提供资金，另一位在我筹集资金的过程中发挥了重要作用，但在相当长的一段时间里他都没准备好做任何实质性工作。五个月后，我发现自己没多少时间可炫耀了，而且我开始担心自己的工作看起来毫无进展。于是，我立即陷入了疯狂状态，开始联系所有我能想到的人。这完全是一种“全面撒网”行为。我在和别人交谈的过程中肯定对每个人都说过“寻找家庭办公室”这样的话，甚至跟我的祖母也这么说过——你绝不想不到她去买彩票时会遇到哪些人，而这些人的孙子或孙女没准又正好干我们这一行。

    我兜售的对象中，超过一半的人为我投了资，原因有三。首先，我总结业绩的时机好的不能再好了。能在First Round Capital完成七项投资是很出色的表现，而且我发现社交网站Foursquare的时间较早（当时这家网站还只是个好的投资故事）。如果我开始筹集资金的时间晚了一年，Foursquare这个投资故事就将不复存在。如果我提前六个月离开First Round，我就看不到第二笔投资的退出。一笔投资实现退出已属侥幸，七笔投资中有两项完成退出应该值得投资者予以关注。

    其次，我确实没有说大话。或者，用更积极的语言来表达就是，我只说自己知道的事情。这次的投资方式相当接近我在First Round Capital时采用的方法——以牵头人的身份投资于纽约市处于发展初期的公司。我不是那种拿出2.5万美元，随后发现自己本可以让投资对象获得更多资金的天使投资人。我不打算到硅谷去开展业务，因为在那里我没有优势。我也不会一直持股——因为此前我从来没有在七年时间里一直担任董事。之所以说我有两笔投资完成退出是运气好，是因为投资时间很短；同时，它们也没有让我获得在较长的一段时间里让投资实现IPO的经验。我从未经历过A轮融资、B轮融资等等环节。人们真正需要相信的只是，如果纽约市出现了吸引人的种子阶段投资机会，我就应该是为数不多的潜在参与者之一，而且有可能成为牵头人。

    I'd be providing them something, too. Wealthy people want to trade money for interestingness -- otherwise what's the point of having money? When you're investing in the next big thing, even if you're not putting a lot of dollars to work, you've got fun stories to tell. People can point to apps on their phone and say, "I funded the people who built this." It's a lot better dinner party conversation than tales from owning a mattress company that outsources the manufacturing.

    That being said, your prior relationships will only take you so far. The people I already knew only accounted for about 10% of the investments in the fund. That was a bit surprising to me. I thought that my network would have been more likely to back me than total strangers, but a) not everyone is a fund investor and b) most of your personal contacts are writing angel-sized checks and they don't amount to a lot. Half my fund came from three entities and the other half came from 47 individuals. You need big checks, so there's no point in sweating the people you thought would have extended themselves but didn't. Move on and try not to keep score too much.

    The biggest lesson learned, and where I wasted a good four or five months, was in spending too much time with the "whales" upfront. I had some large investors who stepped up with their interest early, but I failed to gauge their likelihood and timing for a close--Sales 101. One didn't make it and the other played a big part in my raise, but wasn't ready to do anything formal for quite some time. Five months in, I found myself without much to show for my time and a worry that I wasn't showing any traction. I immediately went into a frenzy, reaching out to every lead I could think of. It was all about filling the top of the funnel. I must have dropped the phrase "looking for family offices" into every conversation I had. I may have even said it to my grandmother. You never know who she might meet at Bingo who has a grandkid in the business.

    Three factors led to being able to close more than half of the people that I pitched. First, the timing of my track record couldn't be better. My seven-company First Round portfolio was strong, and I was early to finding Foursquare (which, at the time, was still a good story). Had I started fundraising a year later, the Foursquare story wouldn't have played out as well. Had I left First Round six months earlier, I wouldn't have had my second exit. One exit could be a fluke, but two out of seven felt like something worth looking at to investors.

    Second, I really wasn't promising all that much--or, to spin it more positively, I stuck to what I knew. I was investing in a way that was quite similar to what I had done at First Round--leading early stage deals in NYC. I wasn't an angel who was putting $25k into deals that was now suggesting I could lead them with a bigger fund. I wasn't trying to play in the Valley, where I didn't have an advantage. I also wasn't following on--because sitting on boards for seven years wasn't what I had done either. My two exits were lucky in that they were fast, but they also didn't give me the experience of leading an investment to an IPO over a long period of time. Doing Series A's, B's, etc. simply wasn't in my experience. All you really had to believe was that if there were interesting seed opportunities coming out of NYC, that I was on the short list of folks would be in the flow and have opportunity to lead them.