Venture Capitalists as a Target Market

At many startup companies, the CEO consumes much of his time trying to secure funding from investors, often venture capitalists. The CEO is essentially trying to sell venture capitalists a share in the company. Therefore the product is the company, and the venture capitalist is the buyer.

Has any product manager researched this market? Conducted one-on-one interviews with prospective investors? Identified the top three problems that prospective investors face? Segmented and sized the market of venture capitalists?

Comments

Brandon said…

I would say for most startups the founder/CEO is the product manager so this is something they will typically have done. I always few the CEO of a startup as the first product manager. Whether they think they are or not they are typically playing the role.

Wed Aug 10, 03:34:00 PM 2005

Roger L. Cauvin said…

Well, that's my question: does the founder/CEO really perform product management on the market of venture capitalists? We know they meet with investors to try to sell the company, but have they performed the research? Have they segmented and profiled the pool of prospective venture capitalists?

Also, is it appropriate for the person selling the company to also be the person researching the market for the company? It's usually important to separate these roles.

Wed Aug 10, 04:07:00 PM 2005

Dancer Test

Are you left-brained or right-brained? Supposedly, your brain lateralization determines how you view this animation. Some people see her rotating clockwise. Others see her rotating counter-clockwise. Some see her unpredictably changing the direction of her rotation. Supposedly, people who see clockwise rotation are right brained. People who see counter-clockwise rotation are left brained. I originally came across this animation here .

Why Spreadsheets Suck for Prioritizing

The Goal As a company executive, you want confidence that your product team (which includes all the people, from all departments, responsible for product success) has a sound basis for deciding which items are on the product roadmap. You also want confidence the team is prioritizing the items in a smart way. What Should We Prioritize? The items the team prioritizes could be features, user stories, epics, market problems, themes, or experiments. Melissa Perri makes an excellent case for a " problem roadmap ", and, in general, I recommend focusing on the latter types of items. However, the topic of what types of items you should prioritize - and in what situations - is interesting and important but beyond the scope of this blog entry. A Sad but Familiar Story If there is significant controversy about priorities, then almost inevitably, a product manager or other member of the team decides to put together The Spreadsheet. I've done it. Some of the mos...

5 Ways Companies Make Product Decisions

In the last blog entry, we reviewed the four problems that companies face, or are trying to overcome, as they make product decisions . Now we'll look at the ways that most companies make their product decisions. Companies that develop, market, and sell products and solutions make strategic and ongoing tactical decisions. They decide what features to include in their products, what messages they will use to communicate the value of their products, what marketing tactics they will use, what prospective customers they will target, and many day-to-day choices. Whether or not these decisions are deliberate or ad hoc, most companies use some combination of the following ways of making product decisions. (A downloadable "map" that summarizes the product decision landscape is included at the end of this article.) Customer Wants Product decisions based on feature requests, focus groups, and what prospects and customers say they want. Companies are selling products to ...

Cauvin

Search This Blog