Below is a guest blog by Matt Miller, General Partner from Walden Venture Capital, a “Sprout” stage firm based out San Francisco and Menlo Park. Since moving to Silicon Valley to begin work at Oracle in 1989, Matt has held leading roles at Remedy Corporation, Moai Technologies, and for the last 12 years at Walden Venture Capital, a firm which targets digital media and cloud technology companies that at the sprout stage of development (think very late seed/early Series A in today’s world). Over the course of his career, Matt has taught many CEOs What You Need in a VC Presentation, as well as listened to countless pitches as a venture investor. Here, Matt shares with us some of his industry insights and some candid advice on venture fundraising. He looks beyond the structure of the pitch and talks about the challenges and misconceptions that face the entrepreneur when navigating the VC minefield. Avoiding the Top 2 Venture Fundraising Mistakes: Raising private capital has always been hard, and raising financing from VCs or angels these days can be more confusing than ever.  There is no “right” way to pitch your company; each business venture is different and there is no simple formula that will put your opportunity ahead of the 1000 others that our firm is likely to consider this year.  However, there are some common pitching mistakes that you should avoid: Mistake #1 Spending time chasing the wrong investors You may think you know who you can raise money from, but do you really?  Do you have the best shot with an angel group or VC’s?  How many VC firms can lead a round in your industry and have done so recently?  Which ones are they?  Why would you want VCs instead of angels when they require board seats and more oversight?  How do you change your pitch for angels versus VC’s?  Unless you have thought through all of these questions and done your homework, you are not ready for your first meeting.  And before that meeting, you need to study the firm and the partner you are meeting with to understand how to pitch them and to tie what you are doing directly to their focus. Most entrepreneurs are under the impression that investors are a homogeneous group, but unlike many angel investors and crowdsourcing platforms, VC firms focus on certain stages or industries and rarely stray off strategy.  Furthermore, only a small subset of VC investors are lead investors – willing to lead a round with a term sheet.  The rest are followers.  A recent study by Flag Capital reported here that only 86 tech venture capital firms remained active in 2012 with a...

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