4 Pieces of Advice for Founders Connecting With Top Venture Capitalistsby Kevin Kinsella Founder of Avalon Ventures

About Kevin Kinsella

Kevin Kinsella is the founder of Avalon Ventures. He is specialized in the formation, financing and development of more than 100 early-stage companies.

Prior to founding Avalon, Mr. Kinsella worked for Solar Turbines International where he was in charge of all international joint ventures, barter and counter-trade. Prior to that, he ran a technology exchange program between the U.S. and Latin America, was an op-ed columnist of the Boston Herald American and much more. Mr. Kinsella is a graduate of MIT with a Bachelor of Science in Management with minors in Electrical Engineering and Political Science. He is current on the Board of Directors for many Avalon portfolio companies.

Getting into the heads of Venture Capitalists can be a tricky job, but essential for raising large amounts of money.

From forming, financing and developing over 100 early-stage companies and investing with my instincts…

Advice on connecting with VCs:

1. Show Passion

Great ideas for new companies or products are originally not thought to be great ideas. If great ideas were just lying around, other people (or more likely, other companies) would have thought of them already and tried to do them.

Passion

Great ideas require a passionate entrepreneur with a unique vision of the future environment, and specifically the future growth of his/her particular product or service, to push these ideas and reality against the naysayers.

PassionWhen facing the long odds against success,

entrepreneurs must:

• Marshal a vision

• Get other co-founders to share it

• Convince relatives and/or VCs to back it financially

• Implement it

• Work days, nights and weekends to make it happen

Passion is a key ingredient to success.

It needs to be visible and is certainly one of the things I look for in the founders we at Avalon Ventures back.

2. Deep Technical Domain Knowledge

There is no substitute for expertise.

Being able to do something faster, cheaper and better all stems from being ‘smarter than the average bear’. Smarter bears have a greater chance of success — and those are the ones we back.

Domain Knowledge

Entrepreneurs need to convince VCs that not only do they have a great product, idea and plan, but that they are the one a VC should be hiring to make it or do it.

Domain KnowledgeWe spend a great deal of time assuring ourselves that we have identified the A-Team to execute on a business plan.

The nightmare scenario is to fund a company and later find out that a rival fund has actually funded the A-Team and Avalon funded the B-Team.

3. Execute On Plan & Within Budget

An entrepreneur does not have the resources to waste on gross inefficiencies and bad ideas for which there is no accountability.

an example:

An Avalon-backed entrepreneur who built the first privately financed vessel for the US Military since World War II used no government contracts.

When asked in a public forum, “How have you been so capital efficient?” his answer was, “Because it was my own money on the line!”

Execute on Plan & Within Budget

The more you can show that even a small scale execution has done well and that you have been capital efficient, the more attractive you and your venture will be to potential investors.

The TakeawayAvalon seeks A-Team founders with deep knowledge, expertise and passion, and that have a vision that will transform an industry.

While “investing with your gut” can seem like an intangible method of investing, we’ve found the right ways of reducing the risk of our bets and discovering A-Teams time and again.

Learn more!Visit http://avalon-ventures.com/blog for more actionable advice on early stage startups, VC funding and other entrepreneurial tips.