Thanks.

> However, after trying to actually pitch
an idea in person, I learned that I wasn't
nearly as prepared as I thought I was.

After several hundred e-mail messages
sent, I never pitched a VC. But I've done
lots of successful pitches elsewhere,
academics, technical work, in business.
As an undergrad math major, I got Kelley,
'General Topology', read it, and gave
lectures to a prof -- so, I had practice
lecturing. I've done lots of college and
grad school teaching. E.g., in a software
house, I corrected some engineers of our
customer, found what they really needed in
power spectral estimation, pitched it, and
converted the competitive bid situation to
sole source. E.g., I passed my oral
dissertation defense for my Ph.D. For a
Ph.D. qualifying exam, I took an oral and
got a High Pass. Once I gave a talk in AI
and got a big room of people all excited
and, then, invited to give more pitches.
I presented an AI paper at a Stanford AAAI
IAAI conference -- seemed to go well
enough.

So, my presentation abilities should be
good enough for VCs.

> As for the clarification on your idea,
this audience (and investors) would expect
to see much more than that.

Here I was just being really short, just
to say that it's not supposed to be a
trivial project, just for here. Actually,
I rarely mentioned all that arithmetic
and, instead, kept things qualitative.
All the e-mail messages and foil decks I
sent had more on the nature of the
project.

In part I omitted that stuff here because
I'm just commenting on the subject of
contacting VCs and not trying to pitch
any VC readers of HN. I'm not including a
sample VC pitch here. I'm not trying to
use HN to pitch VCs.

As I mentioned, some of the advice I got
was to keep the number of foils to a few
and have only a few words per foil and use
the pitch deck just as a way to get past
the VC's first filter and have them ask
for more. Okay, I did that, lots of
times. Didn't work at all well.

Other times I wrote much more, as foils,
just as e-mail, as both, etc. No
difference.

> After reading what you wrote, all I can
tell is that it's related to online
advertising, but I'm not clear on what
specific problem you're addressing, how
your product will make money, or how your
product will compete and gain marketshare
in a crowded market of entrenched (and
capital-rich) competitors.

Right. In what I sent the VCs, I always
covered much of what you mentioned. Some
of what you mentioned seemed too difficult
-- e.g., competition -- to cover at all
well, without raising more questions than I
was answering, so I left it for later.
Their wasn't any "later".

Again, my post here wasn't like any of my
pitch decks or e-mail descriptions. I
told the VCs from more, say, in 6-8 foils,
to a lot more -- made no difference.

> I say this with the intention of being
helpful, not to tear you down. And I'm
just a guy who reads HN, not an insider of
anything.

Yes. Thanks. And here I'm just trying to
get back to some reality on how VCs react
to e-mail, foil decks, and introductions.

In particular I suggest that entrepreneurs
basically ignore all the advice on how to
contact VCs and especially ignore all the
stuff on VC Web sites and, instead, look
for what the heck the VCs really want.
For what they really want, I gave my best
guess.

Or more simply, I don't think that the VCs
give even a weak little hollow hoot about
anything but, to boil it down to one word,
traction, significant and growing
rapidly. For the rest -- founder's
background, team, technology, code
architecture, code, intellectual property,
scalability, barriers against competitors
-- they don't care. Size of the market?
If it's small, then the VCs will have M&A
exit in mind. If large, IPO exit dreams
in mind. For first funding, they don't
care.

Net, I wasted a LOT of time trying the
advice on how to contact VCs, the best
ideas I could think of, tried darned near
everything -- just a total waste of time.
Hence, here I'm suggesting that other
entrepreneurs don't do that.