Founders are grateful, VCs actually buy: how to sell services to venture capital firms
Founders are the most grateful customers you'll ever have and the worst buyers. VCs are the reverse.
I didn't want that to be true. I've spent my whole career on the founder side of the table, and helping daring founders is the reason I do any of this. But on May 18 Amir and I sat down with the numbers from the previous weeks, and they didn't care how I felt. Charles had closed two deals in two days. Both were VCs.
Two deals in two days
Here's what made those closes fast. The person on the call was the person with the budget. No “let me take it to my co-founder.” No “we need to see how the raise goes first.” A partner at a fund decides what to spend from the fund's own budget, and doesn't need anyone's permission to do it.
Compare that with the founder calls running in the same weeks. Somebody on the team put the founder math bluntly: maybe one in a hundred has real money to spend, and plenty are tire kickers. Even founders doing well told us budgets were tight. Every one of those calls was an hour that felt promising and went nowhere.
The line from our team call that captures it: “And they just don't have the broke energy as much as founders.”
Why VCs buy faster than founders
Three things line up for a fund that rarely line up for an early founder.
The decision maker is on the call. Partners at smaller funds run their own operations. They feel the pain directly, so they don't need it translated up a chain.
The budget already exists. A founder pre-raise is spending money they're still trying to raise. A fund has management fees and an operations line. Spending on deal flow isn't a bet on survival, it's the job.
The outcome is legible to them. A fund already measures everything in pipeline: how many companies they saw, how many they met, how many they backed. You aren't introducing a new metric. You're adding to the one they report to their own investors.
Deal flow is the product they already pay for
The phrase we kept coming back to on that call: deal flow is a VC's lifeblood. Every fund is already paying for it one way or another. Partner time at events, scouts, newsletters, cold inbound they have to sort.
So when you sell a fund something that puts more relevant founders in front of them, you aren't selling a new category. You're replacing a cost they already carry with one that produces more. That's the easiest sale there is.
It also explains why our own shows kept turning into sales channels. When we put investors on a panel or on an episode, they meet a stream of founders in a format that costs them nothing. The room itself is the demo.
The broke energy problem with founder ICPs
I want to be careful here, because “founders are broke” is a lazy take and it isn't what I mean.
What I mean is that energy is finite. On that call the problem wasn’t founders, it was time spent on prospects who had no capacity to buy right now. A founder with revenue, contracts and runway is a great customer. A founder six weeks from zero cash, asking for a discount, is someone you will spend three calls trying to rescue, and the notes from the call say it plainly: time wasted on unqualified prospects hurts conversion.
The damage isn't only the lost hours. It's what those hours do to your conversion numbers and your team's morale. When the calendar is full of people who can't buy, your best closer starts to believe the offer is broken. It isn't. The list is.
What founders give you that VCs do not
Here's the honest caveat, and it came up on the same call. Founders are more grateful for an introduction to a VC than a VC is for an introduction to a founder. A founder who gets a meeting with the right investor remembers you for years. A VC who gets one more deck in the pile says thanks and moves on.
That gratitude is worth something. It's referrals, testimonials, loyalty, and sometimes the founder becomes the fund later. So I don't think the answer is to stop serving founders. The answer is sequencing. Sell to the people who can decide today, and serve the founders who are qualified, instead of trying to convert every founder who books a call.
Coming out of that call, the plan had three parts:
- Fund-side prospects moved up the outreach list.
- Founder prospects get qualified before they get a demo, not after.
- The new client dashboard Amir was building got its first test on a meeting with a VC, not a founder.
How to pitch a fund without sounding like a vendor
Lead with flow, not features. A partner wants to know one thing: will this put more of the right companies in front of me with less of my time? Show them the founders, the sectors, the stage, and how fast the meetings land.
Talk like a peer. Most VCs get pitched all day and sold to rarely, so they respond well to someone who treats them as an operator with a pipeline problem instead of a check to chase.
And remember who they talk to. Funds share notes, co-invest and sit on panels together. Do good work for one and the next one hears about it.
If you've been grinding through founder calls that never close, look at who's on the other side of the table. The buyer might be the person your customers are trying to reach. When you're ready to put that to work, start your show.
Frequently asked questions
Do VC firms buy outsourced services?
Yes, especially smaller funds where partners run their own operations. They decide from their own budget, and services that improve deal flow map to what they already pay for.
How do you sell to venture capital firms?
Sell deal flow, not tools. Show the founders, sectors and stage you can put in front of them and how little of their time it costs. Talk to them as operators with a pipeline problem.
Is it better to sell to founders or investors?
Investors usually buy faster because the decision maker holds the budget. Founders are more loyal and grateful, so the answer is sequencing: close funds, and serve founders who qualify on revenue and runway.