We’ve known for a long time that one of the most stressful things for entrepreneurs when they pitch us and other VCs is the initial setup of the meeting when they need to be meeting and greeting the folks in the room and, at the same time, figuring out how to connect their laptop to present their deck.
That combo is a real challenge. Some entrepreneurs navigate it with grace and some really struggle with it. But it is a pain for everyone.
We used to have a cable that the entrepreneur could connect their laptop with but that had its own set of problems as not every laptop would work with the cable.
We use Zoom now and we ask the entrepreneur to get on our guest wifi (no password) and then fire up zoom, join our room, and share their screen.
That works better, particularly when we let the entrepreneur know in advance that is the way we do it so they can download zoom onto their laptop before the meeting.
But even with all of that, we still have this awkward few minutes where the meeting is getting set up.
I am curious to hear from all of you about the best meeting setup situations you have run into in your careers. We do not subscribe to the theory that making it hard on the entrepreneur shows us something. We do subscribe to the theory that making it easy on the entrepreneur is in everyone’s interests.
