Pitching a Venture Capitalist Firm? It's not about the idea!! (5 Phrases to Avoid)

I guess I shouldn't harp on this subject too much, considering there is a small graveyard of folks who have paid us consulting fees to vette out their "ideas," but the truth is that it's most often not about the idea - it's about the execution.

A lot of my clients hate to hear this - it's as if you told them their child is ugly, but it's rare that we come across a client who has an idea for execution of a sales & marketing plan - not a world changing idea.

So here are a list of the following catch phrases we cringe to hear, and that one should never, ever say in a VC pitch (caveat - I've made these same dumb mistakes before I raised my first VC round - Bill Kaiser, if you're reading this, you were right to chase me out of the conference room at Greylock, as I probably said the following):

1) "We only need 1% of a $1B market"

This statement will disqualify you from being seriously considered. Immediately.

2) "If we get the funding then we can _______"

Many VCs are/were scrappy entrepreneurs. They made it on credit cards at one point. Can you?

3) "If you look at [successful company] they have a flawed ______ and we can improve on that."

We hear this a lot - we never see these folks get funded based on this strategy. Assume if your idea is really worth considering, your powerpoint will make the rounds at these successful companies - and you still won't get funded.

4) "We'll make the revenues on advertising.."

You ever buy CPM banner advertising? Ever sell it? Next!

5) "It's a fully redundant, revolutionary technology that..."

We never got funding until I realized technology businesses are about sales & marketing - not technology. And VCs never took me seriously until we started telling them about all the ways our software needed to be improved - not how revolutionary it was.