An insider's guide to making a great pitch to a crypto-native VC

There have been a million guides about how to pitch VCs. But building in crypto is different than in other Silicon Valley-centric technology startup disciplines. Crypto is special in that you can spin up a smart contract from anywhere and immediately offer a product to the whole world.

The fundraising dance is different now than it was in the old world. A founder used to seek out connections to VC investors, hoping to culminate with a packed Monday partner meeting schedule. We still typically ask founders to meet our full investment team before we make an investment, but the format has evolved — Sand Hill Road has been traded in for Zoom — but we’re still looking for founders with unique visions of the future and the ability to execute.

Clarity of thought is highly prized, so the process still starts with a great deck.

(Note: some founders who are well-known for prior accomplishments can get away without making a presentation. This is because they are able to display their clear thinking via another medium. The points below still apply, even when it’s a conversation.)

We receive hundreds of inbound pitches a week — some from entrepreneurs we actively sought out, but many from those who write to us eager to share their visions of the future. Investors are in the business of saying “no” much more often than they say “yes,” but we have observed some ways that founders can better articulate that future.

As a founder, execution of your “main thing” should be the “main thing.” But you’re also always selling — yourself, potential hires, and your product, mission, and community. A great concept will be hindered by a poor presentation. Here are seven examples we’ve commonly encountered.

1. The lack of a “Why Now” inflection

“Why Now” is often the most important question we ask at Standard Crypto when evaluating investments. There is a saying in venture that “being early is the same as being wrong.” A fantastic idea is not invariant to timing. Even the most amazing DeFi protocol had zero chance of success in 2013. Where would it have been built? Were users ready to participate in a financial system based upon assets they couldn’t get their heads around? A lack of a “Why Now” can make an investor think the very worst thing they can: Dead on arrival.

Instead: Explicitly address “Why Now” in a dedicated slide. A strong “Why Now” is about an inflection point and a subsequent market opportunity. Inflections are usually in technology or behavior — and ideally both. If there’s a specific reason why others failed historically, but you can be the first to succeed — share that! If nobody has ever tried before because the infrastructure was lacking but that is no longer the case, that’s a great reason too. Good answers are often very simple.

Examples:

OpenSea, 2017

• The inflections: The first NFT was created in 2014, but the first breakout NFT project was CryptoKitties in 2017. A handful of projects spearheaded by CryptoKitties created a set of NFTs that were actively sought after by users. Though the numbers were small, it was clear that users wanted to buy and sell a new type of digital good.

• The market opportunity: That validation led to demand for a marketplace to facilitate the exchange of NFTs — aided by coalescence of NFT implementation around a small number of open protocol standards (including ERC-721) — because creators wanted to emulate CryptoKitties’ success, thus making a two-sided network effect possible.

A new Bitcoin wallet, 2023

• The tech inflection: Taproot brought efficiency gains to enable more material data storage on Bitcoin.

• The behavioral inflection: People inscribing a million ordinals on BTC ranging from images to text to videos.

• The market opportunity: A new Bitcoin wallet that offers a way to visualize, transfer, and inscribe ordinals.

“Every startup is founded on a hard-earned secret: What have you done to uncover the secret and what is it?"

Full article :

https://www.standardcrypto.vc/thoughts/the-7-deadly-sins-in-crypto-fundraising/

An insider's guide to making a great pitch to a crypto-native VC

There have been a million guides about how to pitch VCs. But building in crypto is different than in other Silicon Valley-centric technology startup disciplines. Crypto is special in that you can spin up a smart contract from anywhere and immediately offer a product to the whole world.

The fundraising dance is different now than it was in the old world. A founder used to seek out connections to VC investors, hoping to culminate with a packed Monday partner meeting schedule. We still typically ask founders to meet our full investment team before we make an investment, but the format has evolved — Sand Hill Road has been traded in for Zoom — but we’re still looking for founders with unique visions of the future and the ability to execute.

Clarity of thought is highly prized, so the process still starts with a great deck.

(Note: some founders who are well-known for prior accomplishments can get away without making a presentation. This is because they are able to display their clear thinking via another medium. The points below still apply, even when it’s a conversation.)

We receive hundreds of inbound pitches a week — some from entrepreneurs we actively sought out, but many from those who write to us eager to share their visions of the future. Investors are in the business of saying “no” much more often than they say “yes,” but we have observed some ways that founders can better articulate that future.

As a founder, execution of your “main thing” should be the “main thing.” But you’re also always selling — yourself, potential hires, and your product, mission, and community. A great concept will be hindered by a poor presentation. Here are seven examples we’ve commonly encountered.

1. The lack of a “Why Now” inflection

“Why Now” is often the most important question we ask at Standard Crypto when evaluating investments. There is a saying in venture that “being early is the same as being wrong.” A fantastic idea is not invariant to timing. Even the most amazing DeFi protocol had zero chance of success in 2013. Where would it have been built? Were users ready to participate in a financial system based upon assets they couldn’t get their heads around? A lack of a “Why Now” can make an investor think the very worst thing they can: Dead on arrival.

Instead: Explicitly address “Why Now” in a dedicated slide. A strong “Why Now” is about an inflection point and a subsequent market opportunity. Inflections are usually in technology or behavior — and ideally both. If there’s a specific reason why others failed historically, but you can be the first to succeed — share that! If nobody has ever tried before because the infrastructure was lacking but that is no longer the case, that’s a great reason too. Good answers are often very simple.

Examples:

OpenSea, 2017

• The inflections: The first NFT was created in 2014, but the first breakout NFT project was CryptoKitties in 2017. A handful of projects spearheaded by CryptoKitties created a set of NFTs that were actively sought after by users. Though the numbers were small, it was clear that users wanted to buy and sell a new type of digital good.

• The market opportunity: That validation led to demand for a marketplace to facilitate the exchange of NFTs — aided by coalescence of NFT implementation around a small number of open protocol standards (including ERC-721) — because creators wanted to emulate CryptoKitties’ success, thus making a two-sided network effect possible.

A new Bitcoin wallet, 2023

• The tech inflection: Taproot brought efficiency gains to enable more material data storage on Bitcoin.

• The behavioral inflection: People inscribing a million ordinals on BTC ranging from images to text to videos.

• The market opportunity: A new Bitcoin wallet that offers a way to visualize, transfer, and inscribe ordinals.

“Every startup is founded on a hard-earned secret: What have you done to uncover the secret and what is it?"

Full article :

https://www.standardcrypto.vc/thoughts/the-7-deadly-sins-in-crypto-fundraising/