VC offices provide free wifi (though I always brought my

[zihadhasan019]

AT&T aircard just in case) and are designed to impress - expensive furnishings and artwork, placards showing the successful companies they've backed and the massive IPOs/exits those companies had. The VCs themselves ran the gamut, from friendly, approachable and jovial to overly serious, harsh and distant. Intentionally or unintentionally, they all have some emotional walls up, which I believe are out of necessity and certainly don't begrudge.


If you're meeting with dozens of entrepreneu russia email list rs every week, you can't get personally attached or build close relationships with even a fraction of them, especially if you're not going to make an investment. It's a very different experience from the many hundreds of other meetings I've had in my professional career, where establishing rapport and working in a mutually positive fashion is the norm. VCs need to drill down on specifics, call out your flaws, explain what they don't like and gloss over a lot of positives in the process.




A typical partner meeting lasts precisely one hour, and in my experience, that rarely deviated (a few times we ran over, and more than a few times things started late). Second meetings are often pretty similar in format, though there's typically more than one partner from the VC firm in attendance, as well as an associate or two. I also found that it was extremely helpful to bring Sarah Bird (SEOmoz's COO and a guru when it comes to our financials) as well as Nick Gerner and/or Ben Hendrickson (who convincingly play the role of "way smarter about technology than anyone else in the room") to these meetings.