The imminence of the Demo Day can also push an institution that might otherwise waffle to make a decision since they know they will face a lot more competition if they wait for the Demo Day.
Because of that, now is a good window to meet with some VC funds. We want you to prioritize the funds at the top of your list. Why? Because if they give you a term sheet, they will put a short fuse on it -- e.g. 3-7 days to sign / make a decision. And so, if you “succeed” and get a term sheet from an institution from an investor before Demo Day -- but it’s a second-tier fund or not your top choice -- you will not be in a position to sign wholeheartedly.
And so this is the window to shoot for the top guys. And if you don’t get any bites, this will also allow you to be more open to angel, seed, and second-tier investor interest after Demo Day.
Our recommendation is to target up to 12 institutions. And reach out asking for advice. You can say your Demo Day is coming up in a few weeks. And you wanted to reach out to get their advice on your pitch prior to Demo Day.
If you don't know of who your ideal institutional targets should be, (1) make sure to fill out the investor research request form and we will research investors for you; (2) check out our lists of the top general funds.
Craft an email to send to them:
Example
Subj: [Investor First Name] - Advice before Our Alchemist Demo Day
[Investor First Name] -
Our Alchemist Demo Day is approaching in 5 weeks, and we were reaching out to seek your advice and feedback on our pitch before we publicly showcase our company on stage. We have been heads down on product and customers to date [Place any impressive traction metrics here]. Alchemist has asked us to now to put attention on preparing for Demo Day, and we would love your advice.
More details on what we are doing and who we are below. At a high level, [Put your one liner below].
[Ravi’s spoken very highly of you OR some other statement here re: why you particularly want to meet with them --e.g. We very much respect your investments in X, Y, and Z.]
If you or a proxy are free to give your feedback, please let us know. We are happy to work with your assistant to find a time.
Cheers,
[Your Name]
[More detail example: Sempre Health is bringing behavior-based, individualized copays to medications.
Patients receive texts like, “If you fill your Lipitor rx today, you’ll pay $5. If you wait till next week, you’ll pay your normal $15.”
By using price as a lever, patients are incentivized to engage in healthy behavior over time. This generates revenue for our pharma customers by increasing access to care for the 1 in 3 patients who skips fills due to cost.
We parse millions of prescription records to identify unique patient behaviors. We use this data to predict and seamlessly deliver the right price for the right patient to every pharmacy in
the country. At the same time, we’re generating the first ever real-world dataset on patient price sensitivities and cost behaviors.
The founders met 8 years ago at UC Berkeley. Anurati (CEO) was the founding data scientist at Propeller Health, before which she built data products at Practice Fusion and led clinical analytics for the CFO at DaVita Healthcare Partners.
Swaraj (CTO) was engineering director at Expect Labs, where he led a team architecting & implementing ML / NLP algorithms. He was previously a full stack engineer on Zynga’s FarmVille 2 team and holds a dual B.S., in Electrical Engineering and Computer
Science.]