Venture Crapital

I wonder if I'm the only person blogging about VC who has never had a VC investment? Over the years I've signed two term sheets:

Term sheet #1) Before easyDNS had it's first customer, we had a fully functional platform ready to launch and VC interest. The deal never happened, and the night it fell through I went home to my apartment and cried like a baby murmuring "We're so fucked" over and over to myself.

Why I thought that, I guess comes back to pure naivety. I simply didn't know better then than to think the start-up cycle included "funding" as a mandatory component. Besides, it all seemed so ...glamorous and it seemed then that we were going to miss out on all that glamour, fame and fortune.

Times change.

Term sheet #2) I was seeking funding for the buyout of my partners and it seemed the VC's were the last house on the street. I had already been to the vendors, the banks, the BDC and a couple angels and just couldn't quite piece together the funding I needed. On a complete and utter fluke, with all systems go and both sides committed to the deal, it blew up for what can almost be described as "clerical reasons".

When I got the phone call I was surprised at how it felt: it was an enormous release. I felt like I had just dodged a bullet and in retrospect I think that moment is the single, luckiest life-defining moment for me. Not a day goes by I don't thank my lucky stars that that second termsheet fell through. In the end I had to Plan-B it, and that is the single best thing that could possibly happened in my business career thus far. But that's another story.

It was quite the education that I picked up in both of those funding processes, in no particular order, here's a few "VC Tricks" I had the good fortune not to learn the hard way...