Real interesting data-driven blog from Charlie O'Donnell of Brooklyn Ventures on how he sources most of his deals, as well as how long it "generally" takes between meeting a founder and providing venture capital funding for said founder. My biggest takeaways (though obviously, with only VC to use as a data point, this could be heavily skewed) were the following:
1. On average, it took about 2.5 years of previously knowing a founder before they were funded for a startup. Though entrepreneurs, don't fret too much - he also states that if it's the right idea, you can meet him and be funded in a week. This speaks more to the fact that the VC world is very relationship-driven, I think. It takes time to build credibility, and the VC is significantly weighing the investment in the "person" as opposed to simply the "idea."
2. Venture capital is not an individual "sport", per se. Sometimes VC's are delayed in funding a round simply because they must wait for other VC funds to be involved in the round. It's a product of the system (I would argue we'll see the same issues with crowdfunding and Angel funding, though that's a whole other monster - only one of many issues to walk through).
3. Around 2/3 of all of his dealflow sources are either from events or from Non-VC intros. I understand the events part (hello techcrunch disrupt, techstars, masschallenge, etc), but am really surprised that the VC intro percentage isn't much higher. From everything I've read/heard, I always thought of VC to be somewhat of an "old boys club."
Anyone else have any thoughts? Concerns?