Almost every day some one asks me if I’ve seen anything interesting lately.
To which I will sometimes cite some of our recent announced investments and why we got excited about it.
If the product exists in the world and the other person I’m talking to has tried it, we have tend to have an engaged chat about that and the person agrees or disagrees with my enthusiasm.
If the product doesn’t yet exist, the response is typically “oh, that’s cool” – which likely tends to be a polite version of “what so cool about that”.
Here’s the thing. No one ever tells the story about why something is compelling (for an early stage product or idea) like the founder. A venture capitalists, no matter how articulate or passionate, simply can’t do it justice.
Imagine if you had never seen Twitter and someone tried to describe the earliest product.
Now compare that with @jack or @ev or @biz describing it. Imagine one of those guys then showing it to you. Then imagine trying it. Embracing it. Feeling it.
Same is true for everyone else we back. Sometimes we get it right and many times we get it wrong. But when we feel it we get possessed.
That’s why a pitch deck over email doesn’t work. I can’t touch it. I can’t feel the founder’s vision.