AgVoice | Cauvery Adiga shares '5 ways VCs say NO'!

As young entrepreneurs, we meet angel investors, venture funds during the different stages of our ventures. This article is a summary of ways we have got a NO from VCs till date. This is definitely not to undermine the assessment process of investors… just a light note on how we saw it.

As a business we seem to have got the fundamentals right from day one – adapt to changing markets, keep costs under control, invest in future, hire the right people etc.  After 4 years of being in business, like most start-ups, we had reached a stage where external funding was required to scale the business and take us to the next level.  Thus started our journey into the world of strategic presentations, number crunching through complicated excels running to several tabs (we have about 40 versions as on date), market analysis, competition benchmarking – well you get the point.

No doubt all of the above have given us deeper insights into the business, shaped us to what we are today and get more convinced about our vision; but it is the VC interactions that has been the most interesting. Till date we must have met over 70 VCs and had at least thrice that many meetings.  While there are several articles on how to address typical VC queries, this article is dedicated to ways we have got a “NO” from them J

1.       The Quickies: There are some real nice ones who do not waste much time and respond with a “NO” or “Share more details” within a week.  These are the easiest to work with and don’t suck too much of your bandwidth.  Their NO is pretty straight forward – not our domain, not our size, not our stage.

2.       The Number Crunchers:  These are fancy ones with atleast 2 Associates in their team who can’t get enough of data about the case.  They dig into every cell, every formulae of your excels till you start doubting yourself.  Average rate is about 3 excels a week for about 4 weeks.  By then, we don’t recognize the 1st version ourselves!  Sadly no amount of our excel skills managed to get us a YES.  Their No is typically “Lets wait for more datapoints” (!!) or “lets observe this for some more time”

3.       The Keep them guessing:  These are the ones who simply don’t respond till you follow up!  No matter how long it takes or how many meeting you have had, they just don’t initiate a call/meeting.  The ball is always in our court here… There is nothing like a proper “NO” in this case, we simply get distracted with actual business and stop following up.

4.       The Round Robin:  These are the ones who make you meet almost EVERYONE in their organization…. with these many meetings, their receptionist recognizes you, their canteen staff know your preference of tea/coffee and you almost feel at home.  You wonder if they are passing you around till they find someone in their team who takes the onus of saying “NO”. Someone eventually does.

5.       The “Nice” ones:  They never say no, meet you at every request, respond to every mail, provide patient feedback and it’s a long courtship till we outgrow it.

About the author:
Cauvery Adiga is COO & Co-founder of PK Online Ventures Pvt. Ltd, A digital media company focussed on multi-screen video and advertising market in India. With 18 years of total experience, Cauvery leads content operations, partnerships, revenue assurance, and customer lifecycle management at PK online and is based out of Bangalore.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author, and do not reflect in any way of Adgully.