The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | Investors - SaaStr 344: 16 Mistakes Founders Make Pitching to VCs with SaaStr CEO and Founder, Jason Lemkin

SaaStr 344: 16 Mistakes Founders Make Pitching to VCs with SaaStr CEO and Founder, Jason Lemkin

06/19/20 • 22 min

The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | Investors

Given that so many VC pitches are over Zoom now, we thought it would be worth sharing the things it’s easy to get wrong when pitching investors.

Pitching VCs is like anything. You’ll get better at it over time. Later, you’ll even get great at it. Once you know how it works, it’s not even that hard to knock it out of the park.

But until then, so many founders make unforced errors. Rookie errors. Here are 16 that you can easily avoid / fix right now today.

Read the full transcript on our blog: https://www.saastr.com/saastr-podcast-344-with-saastr-founder-jason-lemkin/

Given that so many VC pitches are over Zoom now, we thought it would be worth sharing the things it’s easy to get wrong when pitching investors.

Pitching VCs is like anything. You’ll get better at it over time. Later, you’ll even get great at it. Once you know how it works, it’s not even that hard to knock it out of the park.

But until then, so many founders make unforced errors. Rookie errors. Here are 16 that you can easily avoid / fix right now today.

Read the full transcript on our blog: https://www.saastr.com/saastr-podcast-344-with-saastr-founder-jason-lemkin/

Previous Episode

SaaStr 343: Point Nine Capital Managing Partner, Christoph Janz, On Fundraising During a Pandemic

On today's episode, Christoph shares his five tips for fundraising during a pandemic.

Have a clear COVID-19 assessment
Start with an extra-long "long list"
Disqualify ruthlessly
Have a killer deck
Build trust remotely

Christoph has invested in more than 20 SaaS startups and lives and breathes SaaS, everything from “A as in AI-enhanced B2B software” to “Z as in Zendesk”. Christoph co-founded Point Nine Capital in 2011.

Before that, he co-founded two Internet startups (DealPilot.com in 1997 and Pageflakes in 2005). In 2008 he became an angel investor and discovered Zendesk, Clio, FreeAgent – and his love for SaaS.

You can find the podcast transcript on our blog: https://www.saastr.com/saastr-podcast-343-with-point-nine-capital-managing-partner-christoph-janz/

This episode is an excerpt from Christoph’s session at SaaStr Summit: The New New in Venture. You can see the full video here: https://youtu.be/2VGglwbl_Gs

Next Episode

undefined - SaaStr 345: PagerDuty CMO Julie Herendeen on Attribution and Accountability within Marketing Teams, The Optimal Relationship Between Marketing & Product & Why Customer Success and Marketing Have Never Been Closer

SaaStr 345: PagerDuty CMO Julie Herendeen on Attribution and Accountability within Marketing Teams, The Optimal Relationship Between Marketing & Product & Why Customer Success and Marketing Have Never Been Closer

Julie Herendeen is the CMO @ PagerDuty, the real-time operations platform ensuring less downtime and fewer outages, meaning happier customers and more productive teams. Prior to their IPO in 2019 PagerDuty raised funding from some of the best in the business including Accel, a16z, Baseline, Bessemer and Harrison Metal to name a few. As for Julie, prior to PagerDuty she was Vice President of Global Marketing @ Dropbox. Before Dropbox Julie was CMO @ Lookout and before Lookout, Julie enjoyed VP roles at both Yahoo and Shutterfly. If that was not enough, alongside her role at PagerDuty today Julie is also an angel with Broadway Angels and a Board Member @ Hubspot.

In Today’s Episode We Discuss:

How Julie made her way from the world of consumer into the world of enterprise and came to be CMO @ PagerDuty today? What were some of Julie’s biggest lessons from her time as VP Global Marketing at Dropbox?
Does Julie believe that marketing should be held accountable to a number tied directly to revenue? How does Julie believe sales and marketing should work in unison? How can sales be involved in pipeline generation meetings? Should AEs make themselves responsible for sourcing new leads also? What does the ideal handoff look like?
How does Julie see the best marketing and product teams working together? What can marketing do to collect the most valuable data to inform product decisions? In what forum should they be relayed to product teams? How should product and marketing leaders interact most efficiently?
How does Julie think about the relationship of customer success and marketing? Does Julie agree that with the increasing amount of marketing content used post-sale, marketing is doing much of the work of CS? Where does Julie see many going wrong when investing heavily into thought leadership and content marketing?

Julie’s 60 Second SaaStr: