From the VEECEE Team (@VEECEECO)

Year-end approaches quickly and that makes a good moment to briefly look back on last year. For us, we turned our occasional drinks into VEECEE, and organized our first event that was attended by virtually all Dutch tech investment funds. As we speak we are closing our own modest funding round that will enable us to finance our activities in 2016, so stay tuned!

Looking back on 2015, we pulled together our memories from the 1,000+ meetings we held and selected the 15 ‘worst’ things we were -often repeatedly- told:

  • We expect to close this round Friday next week (said during the first Skype interview)
  • We focused on product and not on sales (company has had two full time sales employees on the payroll for the last twelve months)
  • An IPO is the most feasible exit strategy (company was raising a first round)
  • This is our last round in Europe. Investors from the U.S. are already trying to pull us in (user engagement was only visible with a microscope)
  • When asked about customer acquisition: ‘our product will go viral. Facebook too never advertised’ (surely didn’t the recent tractions prove this mechanism)
  • We got a call from a high-profile tier-1 U.S. investor (silence …)
  • We are planning our next round in December next year and plan to raise € 4,510,467
  • We are the Spotify of cyber security
  • I am a serial entrepreneur (wrote a newspaper at age 11, and sold that newspaper to mum and neighbour. Note: we didn’t speak to Richard Branson)
  • We are active in 10 countries (translated the website for 10 countries but generate 97% of revenue from the Netherlands)
  • We just need 1 million users (had one hundred users at that moment)
  • We outsource all tech (always a good one!)
  • Our valuation is at least 100 million
  • We expect three term sheets next week
  • We have no competitors

Hopefully you accept our feedback / advice with grace and appreciation. We are not here to offend people! A final word of wisdom: unless you’re being asked about a specific choice that took lots of consideration, never ever respond a question with ‘that a really good question’. Being told you’re asking good questions makes any VC feel miserable.

Anyway: we greatly enjoyed our meetings, we learnt a lot from all of you – and we all look forward to continue them in 2016!

Happy Season’s Greetings,

The VEECEE Team