George Carlin always made me laugh and think at the same time. He was a social observer who skewered everybody for their absurdities and hypocrisies. Everybody. When he died on June 22^nd I was in the middle of reading his book “When will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops?”. His irreverence is on full throttle offending religion to politics to business to, like I said, everybody. He once said that it is the duty of the comedian to find out where the line was drawn and cross it deliberately. He crosses the line on every page.

The guy who gave us the 7 words you can’t say on TV was actually keeping watch over language as it got softer, more politically correct and inflated with self-importance. He warned us that in the future we will all speak the same language but no one will speak it well.  He said that euphemisms obscure meaning and shade the truth. His death got me thinking about some of the euphemistic language we use in venture capital. He probably would have had a field day with the VC speak we take for granted:

  “crowded space”

 “customer traction”

 “fundable team”

 “scalable model”

 “visibility to an exit”.

 I’m not exactly sure what George would have said as a VC but it would be have been blunt, funny and peppered with f-bombs. He would have offended most entrepreneurs and driven the faint of heart back to their day jobs. George would have been a one man due diligence buzzsaw separating the wheat from the chaff. He even sounded like a hard boiled VC partner prepping for a startup pitch in his rambling poem, A Modern Man:

"I'm a rude dude, but I'm the real deal.

Lean and mean.

 

Plus every company needs a Board member like George who believed that most people work just hard enough not to get fired and get paid just enough money not to quit.

George Carlin didn't believe in much but he did create frisbeetarianism , the belief that when you die, your soul goes up on the roof and gets stuck.

So, rest in peace, George, up on the roof.

I used to be a pretty good golfer. Then I started a company. I still love the game but I don't have enough time or passion to get back down to a single digit handicap. Maybe golf is too easy compared with the challenges of a startup. What got me thinking about losing my golf Jones was yesterday's Velocity Venture Capital Entrepreneurial Drive golf tournament. It's a fundraiser for non-profits that support entrepreneurs in the Sacramento area like SARTA, CleanStart and University of California, Davis' business plan competiton among others. The crazy fun part was the tee box pitch. The 36 foursomes of golfers/investors were pitched at every tee by entrepreneurs in full fundraising mode with demos, contests and giveaways. (Special bonus for investors: No PowerPoints!)

There were clean tech companies like Marquiss Wind Power, medical devices like VuStik and new healthcare search engine from Healthsphere. I had the chance to golf but I was more fired up about doing a Fundability tee box pitch. Over and over and over. We're fundraising too so the choice was easy. Play golf with 3 other guys for 5 hours or present to 140+ potential investors and customers in the same amount of time? To be fair, I had help all day from David Pitta our VP Sales and Brian Ostrovsky our product guy. Brian, a low handicapper, was ready to challenge investors to a long driving contest for equity but we decided that SEC or the PGA might have a problem with that. 

The Entrepreneurial Drive actually worked. It was for a good cause and we connected with some new investors and generated a stack of leads for our soon-to-be-announced private-labeled SaaS solution.  Best of all, I spent a great guiltless day on the golf course even though I never even hit a ball. 

 

 

 

 

Looking to get in front of VCs? You should have hung out at the lobby bar at the Hyatt Regency Santa Clara last week. The annual NVCA meeting drew nearly 1,000 venture capitalists including the industry's luminaries such as John Doerr and Brook Byers of Kleiner Perkins, Dick Kramlich of NEA, Mike Moritz of Sequoia, Paul Ferri of Matrix and on and on. It was a members only conference so you had to be a card carrying venture capitalist to get into the sessions and socializing. I attended in my role as a venture partner with Velocity Venture Capital. Since I identify myself as an entrepreneur first I felt like a sheep in wolf's clothing. A fly on the wall. Behind enemy lines. This was a chance to see what the biggest most powerful venture capitalists are really like behind closed doors and talking to their peers. 

I hate to disappoint you but forget the vulture capital label. These guys are more humble than arrogant. They feel more lucky than smart. And they really identify with the trials and tribulations of the entrepreneur. John Doerr who described himself as a failed entrepreneur, called venture capital " a service business - serving entrepreneurs and we better serve them having been in their shoes." He advised the ballroom full of VCs to "Watch our language... and useless pontificating in front of entrepreneurs". When Mike Moritz was asked how he transitioned from a Time Magazine journalist to his legendary success as a VC with Sequioia he paused then answered, "as soon as you think you know what you're doing, you get a rude comeuppance and you fall on your backside...". These were from VC titans whose firms have invested together in 50 companies, including Google, Apple, Amazon, AOL, Apple, Citrix, Yahoo, Intel, Intuit, PayPal, Sun, Lotus, Cisco, Oracle, YouTube, etc. You get the idea. Their shared portfolio is the Who's Who of Silicon Valley. 

It's good to know you may get their respect as an entrepreneur but how do you get their dollars? Moritz gave away a secret if you want to improve your odds with Sequoia and Kleiner Perkins.  After 50 syndicated investments between the two firms, they still haven't invested in companies whose name begins with H, J, Q, U, X, Y or Z. When it comes to raising capital, you've got to do whatever it takes. We like our name but for the right terms I could be swayed: Hundability? Jundability? Zundability?...

Welcome to the new Fundability blog: Deal Stage– the voice of our company and a source of fresh insight about capital fundraising and early stage investing.  We are entrepreneurs and investors who launched Fundability to accelerate funding by simplifying real-time communication between companies and investors. The money hunt is a high stakes game without written rules  

• • Last year angel investors and VCs invested more than $55,000,000,000 in 50,000+ companies.
  • Another 350,000 companies tried but failed to raise a dime.
  • Only 12.5% of companies were successful in raising capital last year!
    

A company’s “fundability” is in the eye of the investor and you can’t find it solely in a formula or a checklist. This stuff is not for the faint of heart, it’s full of risk and is constantly changing - which is exactly why we love it.

Deal Stage allows an open dialogue among our growing community – and the hard working Fundability team. We plan to: 

• • Discuss the ways that deals are getting done.
  • Highlight how subscribers have accelerated their fundraising  efforts - including our own!
  • Keep you informed and solicit feedback on our product roadmap.
  • Give you a heads-up on any site upgrades and enhancements.
    

We encourage your feedback.  Tell us about your experiences and share your opinions.

Subscribe to Deal Stage via the RSS feed or by e-mail and we’ll let you know of any new posts.

You’ll hear from Fundability Team members (Sales, Marketing, Product, Operations) and other guest writers.  We also would like to add Fundability users to our blogroll. Tell us about your blog. If relevant, we’re happy to let the Fundability Community know about it!