I was at a board meeting the other day of a startup scaling well, and we were discussing their external sales team and how they were quantifying and qualifying new inbound customers. The Founder/CEO stated the company was going to run a competition between existing investors as to who could bring in the most new leads in a year. At the end of the year, that investor with most legit intros would win.
Music to my ears.
As an enterprise vc, my job is to help connect our large and deep Promus Ventures network to our startup teams. It is (or should be) one of the jobs of every enterprise investor. Founders select investors by what they can bring to the table (capital alone doesn’t distinguish), and an enterprise vc must be able to introduce large and meaningful enterprise clients to their teams.
I have stated before that founders don’t leverage their investors as much as they should. I’m not talking about opinions on burn or scaling or pricing or distribution. Frankly, many investors can constantly meddle too much in company business and founders hate it (and founders should). I’m writing here about tapping into the network of all the investors around the table to further propel the company forward.
Investors should be keen on being asked to do this work. If everyone is pulling their weight, then the company will have voluminous amounts of in-bound leads which hopefully results in good times had by all.
So practically, how does this work?
Founders should make a list of the largest most important customers the team has researched and send this list around to your trusted investors/advisors. Sitting back and expecting your investors to introduce names that may or may not be of benefit rarely works. Many times it’s not the fault of the investors, who don’t know which specific names in which vertical that the team is focused on getting introductions. After careful consideration of who should be on this list, the founders should send this around to investors and ask who has connections to any of these names.
The list can be long, but shouldn’t be just regurgitating the Fortune 500. There should be specific reasons as to why each name is on the list. If investors are going to cash in relational chips to reach out to these corporates, there should be a logical reason as to why there is a win-win for both sides. I’ve seen lists of 20 and lists of 100+.
By gamifying investor introductions, not only does it become fun (well as fun as something like this can be) but also gets your investors in motion. You’ll find out soon who is the most helpful and who is not. Many times, founders will see smaller investors working harder (and with better results) than the larger ones in helping with introductions.
When should this process start? We routinely see that founding teams of enterprise companies do not start corporate conversations early enough in their life cycle. Many times they don’t want to tackle this hard part head on just yet. A team’s value proposition should make corporates jump over the table and ask when they can get started on a pilot. We hear the usual “but the product isn’t ready” refrain from founders all the time as a reason for not starting to bang on doors, but it really shouldn’t matter how far along the product is. If your product idea and vision are good enough, you’ll get the pilots papered before an early version of the product is even ready to roll.
So get your team and investors started early on enterprise introductions, and be clear with them about which companies and possible executives you would like to meet. Go one step further and make it a game and you’ll be surprised how much help your team of investors will give you. Be creative as well about the investor dashboard and the way you measure it and be ready for the intros to start rolling (and the smack talk to start flying).
Recipients of this post are not to construe it as investment, legal, or tax advice, and it is not intended to provide the basis for any evaluation of an investment in any fund. Prospective investors should consult with their own legal, investment, tax, accounting, and other advisors to determine the potential benefits, burdens, and risks associated with making an investment in any fund.
