Skip the line -

make it easy for your VC to walk you in the door of potential customers

I’m back! Excited to be collaborating with Dakota McKenzie for this post. Dakota is an early stage sales consultant (and former first GTM hire at endgame). He’s been working with some Boldstart companies, and willing to let me share one of his templates that I’ve found helpful publicly.

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As a founder you are heads down in the details about your business. You know every piece of the product and can dynamically adapt as you talk to potential customers. Your VC partner will never be as deep as you are, but they have a much broader context. You probably take advantage of that at board meetings by pulling your thinking up a level.

The ongoing way in which your VC builds that context can also useful to you. VCs have context because they spend their time with a wide array of companies, leaders, and investors.

VCs should use those conversations to proactively make customer introductions for their portfolio.

Good VCs can effectively help you skip the line and get right to your prospect. Image courtesy of DALL-E 2.

Some VCs don’t make introductions. Others make bad introductions that waste precious founder time. The best founders will make it easy for their investors to identify when an introduction will be genuinely helpful!

A clear description of your ICP 

As an early stage company, your ICP is dynamic. You’re always learning more and refining the profile. Keep your investors up to date on changes and the current ideal customer. You are basically setting a trigger for the investor.

“If someone I am talking to is or says X → I should introduce them to Y company.”

That trigger can be linked to a variety of different factors. It could be around the company stage and job title, other tooling in their stack, or a common complaint customers have before they adopt you.

A forwardable blurb

You want to equip the investor with your language. In the first conversation the VC can talk about you using their own language. In a follow up email when they make an introduction, you’ll want them to have your language handy too - especially if it might get forwarded from your initial contact to others on their team.

Your target customer list

When a founder says “can you introduce me to some customers?” it’s hard to index through everyone you’ve met who might have their problem. It’s also not fun to go read your entire LinkedIn connection list to find the right person. If a founder sends a list of target companies, it’s much more likely you’ll remember who you know who works there. Sharing the list also allows you to add more context, too.

Dakota McKenzie, early stage sales consultant (and former first GTM hire at endgame), agreed to share the template he uses when he works with early stage companies: Target Customer Template.

Additional data that can be helpful in the customer list:

• The ideal contact or influencer. It can help for the VC to both internalize their profile, and also see how they can get to the right person vs. anyone in the org. This is likely the person you are hoping might be your champion.

• The “status” of the customer. Trying to get to someone for the first time is different from trying to triangulate with a new contact for an in process deal.

• Any other contextual information about the potential customers.

Close the loop & give feedback

After an introduction is made, make sure to go back and update on the progress. You can use the template Dakota made (it has a status column) or share updates during your other discussions.

• Getting positive feedback is likely to make the investor want to make more intros (especially if they hear good things from you and the customer!)

• If an introduction wasn’t effective, that’s good to know too. It can help update the ICP, or if the customer was difficult the VC can help other founders avoid wasting time.

• If the the process slows down, the VCs can also check in to get feedback or help accelerate a stalled process.

What your VC can’t do

At the end of the day, VCs intros can be helpful for early customers, but they won’t solve everything:

• VCs can’t close your deals. At the end of the day the founder needs to drive the conversation, and the product has to solve a burning pain for the customer.

• VCs don’t approve spending. Even if you have a shared board member with another company, your VC won’t be able to “approve” a purchase that the operational team doesn’t want to make.

• VCs aren’t a scalable solution. This has the most utility early on as you prove out the company. Over time, the GTM team will take over and this sort of ask will only be for strategic customers.