Why Am I Passing?

Every day I tell at least one entrepreneur that I am passing on investment in their company. Some times I tell 10. I don’t know what the most in one day is, but it’s probably more than 25. I try to respond to all emails so a lot of these are in the "never were appropriate to pursue" category, but at least one each day is someone that I’ve actually engaged with beyond a cold email that was randomly sent to me.

While I try to give a short explanation – which often is that the company is not in an area that I’m interested in – it gets harder when I’ve actually spent some time looking at the company, like the idea and the people, and find it relevant to one of the investment themes we have active at the time.

Over the years – I’ve come up with a set of filters to quickly turn down deals. This is an important process as I want to limit the time I spent investigating companies that I don’t investment in. Rather – I want to maximize my time working with my existing portfolio companies and quickly / deeply evaluating new companies that have a high chance of us funding them.

Brad Feld

Full Story: http://alwayson.goingon.com/permalink/post/24551