a canadian startup

but i don’t know any vc’s — solution: become part of the community

Marc Andreessen has another great post about meeting VC’s. (via Kedrosky).

Fellow entrepreneurs, this one is required reading!

Not knowing VC’s has always been a big problem for me. When I started working in the tech entrepreneurship field about 12 months ago, I was just learning about what a VC was (all I knew was, according to my former boss, they are evil).

When I first wanted to meet with some, I knew I couldn’t just email them directly. But what is the alternative?

One suggestion I have is to become part of the community.

In Canada especially, there are only X number of reputable entrepreneurs “working on the next big thing” and there are Y reputable VC’s. (X feels something like 20 or so depending on how you define “reputable” and Y feels something like 6).

Even though there are only like 20 reputable startup entrepreneurs in Canada, if you ever go a conference where a famous VC gives a talk on “how to pitch to a VC” (let’s call this fictional VC “Mick Regal”), there will be 100 people claiming to be working on a new startup. You’re just one of a 100 and Mick has no way of noticing that you’re special. Don’t worry about that — ask a question during the conference and then sign up for a new conference (BarCamp or DemoCamp, anyone?). You’ll meet a different group of the 100 people that were in the audience before, but now you’ll start to notice which entrepreneurs are the “real” ones, and which ones are the ones that just finished their MBA.

Chat with the other entrepreneurs. Be nice and smart and yourself and don’t pitch anything.

The neat thing that will happen is that after doing this for a year (yes that is a long time) the next time you see Mick, he will remember you. You were that jerk that asked that naive question about NDA’s. But he knows your name!

I am by no means a huge success in this world.

So my advice for the old “but I don’t know any VC’s” goes like this:

1. Start a company, any old crappy company, just so you can pretend to be an entrepreneur. Don’t worry, you can make an even better company the next time.
2. Participate in the community. Go to breakfast talks, attend conferences, and go to BarCamps. Don’t go around pitching your stuff, please!

My last piece of advice is that once you collect some business cards and make some friends, share those contacts. Your VC friends will appreciate well written, brief emails telling them about the new startup in your area. Your entrepreneur friends will appreciate being introduced to VC’s.

So perhaps my real advice is:

1. Be a nice, good person
2. Be patient

#2 is really hard, I know!