Renaissance man would be a less than generous label for David Hornik, currently a General Partner with August Capital, lecturer at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, and the creator and Executive Producer of The Lobby Conference (insert breath taking here).
Docstoc’s Jason Nazar caught up with Hornik at his most recent Startups Uncensored and per usual, was able to pull the funny out of his guest to the tune of both charismatic and informative. Here are our top ten takeaways:
10
“You have to be a good salesperson. You have to be a good judge of character. Everything else is miniscule compared to those two.”
9
“Describe what you did, don’t tell me who you are. If you have a product, the best thing you can do is get on with it. Show your product. VC’s are product people.”
8
“It’s never a good idea to tell me anything. You need to show me everything.”7
“Don’t talk about the team? Huge mistake in a pitch. Gravity is an extremely deep technical team.”6
“SoCal companies are more about content and promotion…attention. ‘Empower the attention of celebrity’. You’ll never hear that in the Bay. That’s the broadest, completely unfair generalization I can make.”5
“The single most important thing is who introduces you to me. It is how you get to me. It’s having someone with a lot of credibility get you to me. Every one of my deals came from someone.”4
“Have a great executive summary – just a teaser. Get you excited, give you one laugh line that makes you say, ‘I’ve gotta get more of that!’ In every instance all you need to do is get me to want more than you just told me.”3
“No one has gotten rich in the venture business by making good terms.”2
“Take your business seriously. Seriously.”1
“If you can think of something else you’d love to do, I should not be funding you.”
Do you have any perfect pitch stories? Horror pitch stories? Let us know and maybe we can feature you!
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