I too am an outsider to the VC world, but while it may be a bit daunting I’ve had fairly good luck with phoning people and getting meetings. Sure there are a few VC’s out there that want nothing but a bulletproof business plan with sound metrics/financials, but on the same side I’ve gotten meetings based on nothing more than a 2 minute phone chat and/or a 10 slide powerpoint.

I echo Nick’s comments on building up a list of good VC blogs, if nothing else you can see what gets funded and what people are talking about. Outside of that, you do have to get yourself out there and network like your life depends on it.

I’m a Brit working from home for the past year and a half building podcast.com with the rest of the very small company (4) in Boston, USA. I’ve been over there for many a VC meeting/pitch and ther a feeling that everyone needs to be in Silicon Valley. The money seems greener and the ideas better.

Absolute rubbish. I’m building the future of information aggregation and organisation (note spelling – no ‘z’ heh) and the guys in Silly Con Valley don’t even realise it yet

Oh but they will… they will. Mu hu hu harr. etc.. (web 3.0)

I decided to work in the web about 12 years ago, realising that by do so it meant I could work for ANYONE, ANYWHERE.

ps: You need to update the copyright date in your template – it still says 2006

I stumbled upon on a Mashup event in London a few weeks ago and what struck me was the level of interest and the volume of attendees from finance or business.

The vast majority of small tech companies in the North East are service based, so networking events are generally orientated around selling or promoting services. Mashup had a completely different spin – were the product or idea was king. I’m not sure whether this is the same for other outlying regions?

Having said that their are a number of things going on ‘up north’ to try and change this, so we’ll have to see how the next few years play out I reckon. I know of incubator/accelerator/funding setups getting going in the North West, The North East and as mentioned in West Yorkshire.

It just happens that your chances of success may be slightly higher when you are based close to or in a relevant industry cluster. Maybe the VCs know this?

Check http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industry_cluster

Thank you for raising this important issue.

May I propose you make this entrepreneur aware of WirelessMatch, subject to his/her activities relate to wireless, mobile internet, online media and mobile telecoms activities requiring funding up to £2.5m

Most of our investors are sector/technology orientated, rather than location-based.

Best regards

Steven Dotsch
Managing director
WirelessMatch Ltd – UK’s Wireless Funding Network
URL: http://www.WirelessMatch.co.uk
Em: steven@WirelessMatch.co.uk
Tel: 020 8374 8718

OpenCoffee [http://www.opencoffeeclub.org/] has been a huge global success with ‘clubs’ in over 80 cities and towns around the world. This simple idea – which costs nothing to run – is enabling entrepreneurs in some very small communities to meet and network very efficietly and easily.

Seedcamp [www.seedcamp.com] too demostrates how much supprt there is for tech entrpreneurship outside of London. 268 applications from 40 countries!
And the finalists hailed from all over.

London is full of people with ideas and VCs with money to spend, I know I’m here , but these two groups usually don’t meet unless it’s open coffee (do you have it where you are, if not – start one ! http://www.opencoffeeclub.org). VCs will want to see some sort of traction and validation before they go in. It looks to me like a VC is not what you need right now anyway. If you have good progress in validating your plan, you will hopefully be able to pick and choose your VC.

London seemed to take that much longer with the establishment taking much longer to recover from having its fingers burnt the first time around. It felt to me that if you weren’t on the US West coast, you were out of the centre of the world.

At the last MediaTech event I attended, one of the VCs showed a slide comparing US and European dealflow. There was no competition, virtually all of the major successes came out of the US. Whilst I suspect this picture is changing – there are far wiser people on this subject – it’s hard to be the gravity of the cities where the money men ply their trade. It’s possible, but it requires more work.

Or…work harder, smarter and put a lot more effort into building and retaining connections. As some of the other commentors have already said, there’s some good discipline enforced if the route to money is that bit harder.

The Internet world is only a few 10s of mS big (when its working) – smile and lol

Cheers

Chris

I would have to agree with that one. After a fairly dismal period pitching to a series of VCs for a company that would commercialise a pretty successful open source product I’m now much happier that I didn’t go down that route.

So rather than giving up I decided to write the product anyway – now I believe it is a much better state than it would have been had we got a lump of cash a while back and I spent my time talking to VCs rather than users. The extra time taken working on the product means that we are now hopefully in a really strong position technologically with a much more open strategy than would otherwise have been possible.

Of course, there is an element of “making the best of things” – but not having external investors can sometimes be an advantage.

Thats my two centimes. Yes, I live in Geneva.
Shafqat
http://www.newscred.com

I think there is a lot to be said for being where it’s happening. Not because VC’s aren’t interested in talking to you (which could be true but not my experience) but because it takes what Paul Walsh was saying – building connections – and that takes time.

If you’re based up in the frozen north it takes even more time, I’d love to get along to every tech event in London and if I lived in London I could take a few hours out and pop along.

As it is I can either fly, which takes around 3 hours each way including connections or get the train, around 5 hours each way. Whichever I choose if it’s a night event it means staying over.

So every meet-up takes a day or more and to build connections you need to be a regular which becomes very difficult.

My experience is that by not being in London it takes longer to build the right sort of network with the right sort of people.

It’s about connecting with people around you. Get to know them, let them get to know you. It’s not difficult, it’s just time consuming. Start blogging if you’re not going it already – this is a great way to get to know people outside your area. I wasn’t taking a dig at you. I just think it’s time people stop blaming VCs for everything.

The second thing was to immerse myself in every online forum/chat/group that seemed to have any VC/Angel element, again to see how to plan out my final approach when it became necessary.

Then two months ago I started attending local events, and this is certainly where I can sympathize with the writer of the email, that when it came down to it I really needed to start networking in central london (£40 worth of travel for each day I go in). I did find smaller networking events (business link has lots around the UK) but they run much less often and are in generally attended by far fewer VC’s than you find in London.

So would I have got far if I had not put in all the planning/legwork? I don’t think so, bottom line, even if you have local access to VC’s it still does not mean they are going to listen unless you know what to say and how to get across what you are trying to sell.