First, congratulations in getting to a partnership meeting! Content wise, a partnership meeting will cover the same topics you will cover in a first meeting as many partners will be really hearing about for the first time at this meeting. However, there are a few key differences to note:
Generally, by the time you get to a Partnership meeting stage, you have landed a champion within the partnership group that wants to promote you. That partner is your advocate. The partnership meeting is normally a time for your partner champion to present your venture as an opportunity to the rest of the partnership and get the partnership’s blessing.
In some cases -- normally if the firm feels they need to move quickly to make a quick decision -- the lead advocate may not be firmly rooted yet, and the partnership meeting may be still very much in evaluation mode as the partnership is trying to make a quick decision.
If you feel like you have a clear advocate who is your champion, you should reach out to them to get guidance on what to highlight during the partnership meeting. They should give you a flavor of what will be most important based on the personalities of the other partners in the room.
In the absence of that, here is our general guidelines:
Bring the founding / leadership team to the partners’ meeting if you have one. They should be quiet during the meeting. This is more of a formality so the VC partnership can visually see there is a real team behind the organization. Having said that, you should confer with you team beforehand and make sure you have agreement on how questions will be handled. In general, we like to propose that the CEO handle ALL questions unless the CEO explicitly calls on a team member to answer. Why? Because any question that comes up during the partner meeting a VC should know the answer to. If there is a question that is a true hard ball question -- where there is disagreement amongst the team -- if the team has conflicting viewpoints or is talking over each other, it will look bad. If there is a single perspective it will look coherent.
Dress well. A lot of the communication will be non-verbal and the partnership will be making quick judgments on you in a short period of time. Dress well!
Arrive early. You may need to wait as partnership meetings usually occur on Mondays or days when the partnership as a whole in making decisions. This can lead to delays, etc., but it is critical that you be ready to go when they are.
Come prepared. Bring business cards. Have your laptop fully charged. Have adapters ready for plugging in your laptop to different consoles. When you get in the room, every minute counts and you may have limited time. You don’t want to be stressing about small things. Make sure to know answers to the standard questions a VC may ask.
When you start, before you dive in, SET THE CONTEXT. Signal Strength and Access and hit the B-Button. You can review our deeper description of this here. But basically, you want to:
Get your laptop set up and the presentation loaded
Hit the b button so it’s blank and everyone is looking at you
Thank everyone for their time and the opportunity to present
Set the context on how you go to this meeting (E.G. you have had 3 meetings prior to this one)
Signal strength
Signal access
Set the agenda
Get consent on the agenda
Here’s an example:
“Thank you all for your time today. It’s terrific to be here. I know your time is precious, so before I begin, let me set forth some context and proposed agenda for this meeting. As you may know, we have had 3 prior meetings before this with John, Mary, and James. We are part of the Alchemist Accelerator, and while we were not planning on fundraising until Q2, we have received pre-emptive interest from other funds who are now also in final partner meeting stages, which is what compelled us to meet sooner with you guys. We have heard terrific things about you from Ravi and others, and have really enjoyed our interactions with John, Mary, and James to date. Today, my plan is to give you a quick overview of what we are doing I would like to keep this interactive and I can deep into any areas that are of specific concern. Does that work?”
The rest of meeting should cover the same basic topics as a typical meeting, but it can go in any direction depending on the mood of the group. Keep your energy up, and enjoy it.
You can follow up with a thank you email to the group.
Follow up with your lead if you have not heard from them 2 days after to decipher next steps.