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Kylie Sachs

Partner
Ascend Venture Group

• Saying There Is No Competition. Competition can be a good thing. If there is no competition, we have to ask the question, is there a market?

• Presenting a Poorly Prepared Top-Down Financial Analysis. If you are putting forward a financial model, and you say the market is $500,000 and you took 1% of the market, it brings up so many other questions—like how, why, what time frame. It tells me nothing about whether you know how to run your business.

• Saying, Our Numbers Are Conservative. Leave it to me to decide: 99% of the time what we are presented with is not conservative. It doesn’t help you to say these are conservative numbers. I probably think they are too high, and I don’t need them to be so high in order for me to make money.

• Not Letting the VC Determine the Valuation. Sometimes we see a presentation where they have put a valuation on their company. If somebody already invested and put money in during a round—then, yes, a valuation is fine. But if nobody has invested yet or you are in Series B, an entrepreneur shouldn’t put a valuation on their company. You are doing a disservice to yourself, because it is up to the venture capitalist to determine what that valuation is or should be. If an entrepreneur tells us the valuation is $5 million, and I think it’s $50 million, they are negotiating against themselves.

• Asking a VC To Sign a Nondisclosure Agreement. In general, venture capitalists don’t do it, and it makes an entrepreneur look naive. We won’t take the meeting.

• Not Clearly Explaining Your Product or Service. It’s really basic, but a lot of times the entrepreneur doesn’t tell me what problem they are solving or they don’t explain what their company is. Simply say: "Here is what are product does or will do."