How to talk to a VC at an event ...?

I do sometimes wonder how one should talk with a VC when one bumps into them at an event.  I was out last night at a bash for the start-up community.  I bumped into a smart young VC who only recently joined one of the bigger firms.  I think I ended up talking the poor guy’s ear off.

Here’s how it ran:  We’d both arrived early, not many people there yet.  I noticed a guy I recognized, name badge rang a bell, but couldn’t place him.  So, after a brief “hi” I said as much.  He reminded me there’d been a workshop a couple of weeks back where a couple of VCs talked to a dozen or so startup CEOs with tips and feedback on pitch decks.  I asked him to remind me what company he was with, and he named a VC firm.  Ah… yes he was one of the VCs there wasn’t he.


It was a great workshop - one of the Orrick series.  I’d heard rumblings in the break out afterwards from some of the CEOs there that they’d not got much out of it - I think they were crazy, I found the feedback very helpful.  Possibly because they’d just happened to pick the slide I was struggling with most to give me pointers on.  A digression.

Back to last night.  He vaguely remembered AppWhirl, but not really much of what we did so I gave him the run down.  The event was pretty empty at that point, there weren’t that many people there either of us recognized, and we ended up chatting quite a while.  I am an entrepreneur.  I love what I do and I believe we’re building a billion dollar business.  (Now, I think it’s not necessarily immediately apparent how you blow this business up to that scale, as we’re starting with baby steps - what’s called in my world a “minimum viable product” approach.)  So, I ended up buttonholing the guy for probably a good 20 mins or so talking about the space.  I was not pitching (in fact trying not to) so much as talking about where we at AppWhirl think the mobile apps space is going, the trends that we think underly this that most people still haven’t latched onto yet, an why therefore our approach will win.  It helps that we’re right :-)

When someone else came in whom he recognized, I didn’t want him to feel cornered, so I politely made an excuse to wander off and he went and chatted to his friend.  I don’t think I imposed too much, but I do wonder where that line is.

We’ve all been there with the guy who is clearly making those around him feel uncomfortable by going on and on about his startup.  We’ve all seen the look of polite disinterestedness/boredom/fear/”help get me out of here” in the eyes of VCs who’ve been trapped by a pushy entrepreneur after a speaking gig as a line builds waiting to talk to them.  I think I’m pretty good at gauging people’s interestedness/boredom when talking to them, but I was left wondering what the right thing to do is.  Do you just say hi and continue mixing, following up with a “hey it was nice to bump into you here’s my pitch” email?  Do you do the elevator pitch and then proceed in sell mode, never missing any opportunity (which is NOT what I did)?  Or did I get it about right?   Hmm…  I do wonder.

In the end it’s not the end of the world either way.  I got to have a drink with an interesting guy and talked a bit about what I am most excited about nowadays.