I was at a demo day last week. The entire time, the lady sitting next to me was on her e-mail. Investors, never do this.
That presentation could be the most important 5 minutes of that founder’s professional life. You owe it to them to pay attention.
If you’re too busy to listen, don’t attend the event. Or if necessary, excuse yourself and handle your business in private.
Writing e-mails while someone is talking is rude. Unfortunately, this behavior has become normal in society.
If a founder is pitching, either at an event or one-on-one, I give them my full attention. No email, no X, no nothing.
I take notes in an old fashioned, paper composition notebook.
This way, the founder can easily see that I’m not on e-mail or reading the news. It also gives me a chance to use my Mitsubishi cedar pencils, which smell amazing. 🙂
Never forget that when a founder pitches you, they have everything on the line.
One founder I know went without salary for a year as she closed her pre-seed round. When she told investors why the company was so important to her, I can only hope the they were paying attention.
If you want to be self-interested, here are two good reasons to pay attention when a founder talks….
First, being rude affects your reputation. The best deals come to folks with a good reputation.
Second, that pitch your half-listening to could be Uber! Do you want to miss out on millions of dollars because you were too busy BS-ing on Slack?
I won’t always understand everything a founder says. And I won’t always make the right decisions.
But at a bare minimum, I can be present and respectful. That’s not too much to ask.
With anything you do as an investor, ask yourself a question: would Doug Leone do this? If the answer is no, don’t do it.
What’s the worst investor behavior you’ve seen (without mentioning names)?
More on tech:
When an Investor Pulls Your Term Sheet
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