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Want VC? Go get some peacock feathers

Wonder why VCs place more emphasis "on the secondary stuff" - like what you and your other team members have done before - rather than your actual product or service? Kevin Laws has an interesting explanation and analogy - to the mating behavior of peackocks!:
Are you really worth $2 million more the day your first two customers write $10,000 checks? No, you’re worth $20,000 more. However, both a bad company and a good company can claim that they will sign up two paying customers in the next month. Only the good company can actually show you the checks a month later. Before you had the check, you were facing the “uncertainty discount” – you might be a bad company (or more likely, a well intended but overconfident company).

That’s why VCs pattern match on credibility factors when deciding to spend more time with a company rather than diving directly into the details. When having such a wide selection of available mates, sorting out the good from the bad can be a matter of looking for a nice tail. Feathers in this tail include a high quality board of advisors, a good law firm, a good bank, management with a past track record, or the first paying customer. While all of these things can be very valuable to a startup company, their value to a venture investor can appear out of proportion to the value they bring through their work. As a result, sometimes it may appear that management is sacrificing the long term goals of the company to establish the feathers necessary to get funded. In that case, they really can be peacock feathers - things that may slow down long term success, but that only good companies can take on. In certain models where significant funding can make the difference between success and failure, those actions may be required to succeed at all.

Arun Natarajan is the Editor of TSJ Media, which tracks venture capital activity in India and Indian-founded companies worldwide. View sample issues of TSJ Media's Venture Intelligence India newsletters and reports.

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