Mike Preuss's posts

Co-founder and CEO of Visible.vc. Chicago born and IU Grad.

Introducing Decks — Manage Your Raise From Deck to Check

The pitch deck is the core marketing asset that jumpstarts any fundraising effort. It acts as the catalyst for connection, conversation, and relationship building.  We talked to hundreds of founders, and three problems emerged around pitch deck sharing:  I’m not sure how prepared a potential investor is before heading into a meeting.  I’m under-networked. I share my deck to get meetings but want to understand who is engaged.  I iterate on my deck every hour. Sharing the latest version is a pain.  Today, we are launching Decks. A dead-simple way to host and share a pitch deck on Visible. Decks are completely integrated with our fundraising crm and leading investor updates platform. You’ll be able to set customized sharing permissions, notifications when investors view your deck, upload new versions without…

Mike’s Note — Progressive Disclosure

Progressive disclosure is an interaction design principle that sequences screens, so users do not feel overwhelmed and inevitably bounce. Founders should take note of this principle when reaching out to potential employees and investors. Your goal is always to get to the next step, not get hitched after 2,000 words. If you are connecting with someone for the first time, your goal should be to receive a response. Keep things between 50 to 250 words (just like this note). As Kunu says, do less.

Mike’s Note #16 — I told you this was going to happen

Just like a LiveJournal that went dormant from neglect, my weekly note went silent at the beginning of June. To be fair, I said this might happen in my first note. Why did I go MIA? I started to get outside on the weekends after the initial covid lockdown. We launched our new brand identity and the future of Visible. I’m dusting off the keyboard and will be back regularly. We are coming off our best quarter of all time and just brought on Angelina who will be heading up our founder community. We need your help. We hope to build a community that you have been yearning for and would love your feedback. You can fill out this form to provide some feedback or just reply back. We are onboarding our first cohort of…

Visible has a new look

Over the past twelve months, Visible has evolved from a tool to help founders write great investor updates to a platform to help founders Raise capital, Track key metrics, and Update investors. We felt it was only fitting to evolve our brand just as we have evolved our product. We’re excited to share our new brand identity with you that pays homage to our past while letting us grow into our future.     Our mission hasn’t changed, we are still here to give founders a better chance of success. We’ve updated our logo, wordmark, typeface, colors, and imagery across our marketing assets and app. Below we’ll get into why we ultimately made the change and how we went about accomplishing the overhaul this summer. Why change? Simply put, we…

New Feature: Portfolio Metric Formulas

Months of Runway? Profit Margin? Growth Rates? Revenue Multiples? Bessemer Efficiency Index? Rule of 40? Cash Burn? These are all metrics investors care about through various stages of a startups lifecycle. The common thread of the aforementioned metrics is they can be calculated through a couple core KPIs that a startup typically provides through their investor update. We just launched portfolio metric formulas to make calculating these a snap. Investors can now get instant insights while not having to burden their company by creating more complexity in a regular request. Here is a quick video preview walking through Months of Runway as an example: All customers that are on the Pro Plan or above will get immediate access to this feature as it is live today. Want to learn more? Book a demo with our team at visible.vc/investors  

3 Tips for Cold Emailing Potential Investors + Outreach Email Template

Raise capital, update investors and engage your team from a single platform. Try Visible free for 14 days. Quick Navigation Make Sure You Are Targeting Appropriate Investors Write Concise Emails Be Clear and Specific in the Body of Email Investor Outreach Email Template How to Use Visible’s Investor Outreach Email Template Other Helpful Outreach Tips Use Visible to Kick Off Your Fundraising Process Getting connected with potential investors for your fundraise is laborious. Quite often it feels like you are playing a massive game of inside baseball and thought leaders tell you that the only way in is to have a warm introduction. The reality is that investors are open to cold pitches and well known companies like Box were funded through a cold email. We equate a fundraising process…

Visible Connect: Introducing Our Investor Database

TL;DR — We are excited to announce Visible Connect, our investor database. Visible Connect uses first hand data and directly integrates to our Fundraising CRM. You can give Visible Connect a try here.  Fundraising is a challenging, time consuming process for startups. One of those challenges is finding the right investors. Founders spend countless hours trying to understand:  Is this investor active? What deals have they done recently? Will they lead? Take a board seat?  What geographies do they invest in? What stages? What verticals?  What size checks do they typically write? Have they raised a new fund recently?  Do they have certain traction metrics or growth rates they like to see?  The current patchwork of data sources & resources lack the founder first mentality, can be cost prohibitive and lack…

Mike’s Note #15 — Raising?

Are you raising (or about to raise) a round between $500k and $2M? Or know an incredible founder who is? An internal skunkworks team here at Visible is embarking on an exciting experiment to more directly help founders raise funding. We are going to select 5 amazing startups to closely partner with to make the lonely, stressful process of fundraising way better – at no cost and for zero equity. Get support with: Pitch Deck Construction & Design Investor Target List & Introductions Process & Strategy Financial Modeling Diligence Support & Data Room Setup And much more! Tap into our growing network of active investors, topic experts, and operators. We’ll be there to coach you on best practices and lend emotional support throughout your fundraising journey. If you’re interested in…

Mike’s Note #13 — It is easier to change your preferred airline than it is your cap table

Seth Godin wrote “beware of experience asymmetry.” Reading his post, I thought about the time I got my first mortgage. I remember thinking, Am I getting a good rate? How much house should I buy versus how much house can I buy? It was stressful. I felt vulnerable. The internet and publicly available data helped me call around and shop rates. (I still would have paid handsome money for a local guide.) Seth calls out venture capital in his post. This is an important place to get a local guide. In my opinion, the best local guide is another venture firm. This may sound counterintuitive, let me explain. If you’re looking to make a deal, having more than one venture firm in the mix will help you get a truer…

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