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12 tweets,
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1) Contrarian perspective here - it's ok to *not* meet a founder in person before deciding to invest
2) Easier to be more objective / not let unconscious biases get in the way
3) Easier to invest in the best teams. If you are stuck to only geographies you can fly to, it means you will limit your pool. Usually those are the same pools where other investors look.
4) this drives up valuations an reduces multiple outcome potential.
5) There are overlooked teams in many cities. But if there is only one potential unicorn in Podunk town, you can't get to it if you require yourself to meet ppl in person because it's not worth your while to go there for 1 potential company
6) At my prior firm, where we all flew around a lot I created a measurement for "deal ROI" - did a city yield a high enough set of warm leads to make sense flying to? Most cities did not meet that threshold but we have 1 off companies from those cities.
7) as a side note, Toronto ALWAYS exceeded that "deal ROI" threshold...
8) I think about VC as a b2b business. Most modern b2b companies are scaling their customer acquisition these days through online lead gen and calls - not by walking around going door to door.
9) small funds have basically no management fees - so almost by definition, you have to be scrappy w your lead gen because you have no budget to fly around on your own dime.
10) my travel is often on someone else's dime - usually because of a conference talk or something - but those conferences don't always line up with high deal ROI cities
11) I've been writing my blog at elizabethyin.com for the last few years and have been amazed by how it's helped me connect w so many entrepreneurs. Writing / list building scales quite well.
12) But just like in b2b, there's a whole range of businesses and the right customer acq depends on the business. Pre-seed is different from series B. Flying to Topeka to chase one particular company with $1mrr is very different from seeing thousands who have no traction.
