If there's one thing that all Colorado Entrepreneurs know, Colorado VC's like to Ski !
Venture Capital in the Rockies is the primary Venture Capital Conference in Colorado each year. It now happens twice year, once in CO and once in the western states in the fall. In 2007 I presented Lijit and it was a great experience. I ended up getting an investment from Boulder Ventures and I can say the process 'worked for me'. It was exciting, it was stressful, but it was awesome.
I generally go every year because it's a good community mixing event where you can see other peoples great ideas, what gets traction with investors, how are CEO's presenting their opportunities, what questions are getting asked, etc. I'm a big fan of going to these things when I'm NOT presenting. I think it makes me better when I do – do it.
So this last fall as I heard the call go out for companies, I reflected back on the same comments I hear from entrepreneurs every year. So here's the deal. There has been an undercurrent with this event. Not huge, but 'something'. How does your company get selected to present in one of these slots? The undercurrent suggests that you need to know someone "on the inside". I really don't know if that's true (or even wrong if it is true) but it got me thinking enough to ping Seth Levine and Tim Conner.
Seth, Tim and I got together and discussed the process a bit and ways to make the process more translucent for entrepreneurs. I think by definition it can't be completely transparent, but if a little more information about the process was available to entrepreneurs then maybe they could tailor their great ideas to steer into areas that are more easily fundable. This is good for everyone in the ecosystem of building great, highly leveragable companies.
As a result Tim wrote a great post on the VCIR blog that hopefully sheds a little more light on the process. I encourage all local entrepreneurs to read all the local blogs around venture capital and attend VCIR at least once before attending as a presenter.
