This approach works brilliantly if:<p>1. You trust your potential investors. Curate your shortlist through your network and aim for the best of the bunch. Emphasize your network's recommendations rather than chasing name-brands.<p>2. You have real data. Most applicable for growth rounds. Doesn't apply to most seed / Series A rounds unless you're really kicking ass early<p>And you will not find a VC who wouldn't be thrilled to hear of this approach. Saves time and adds extra depth to those in-person discussions.
If you've got incredible data, by all means sell with it.<p>But FAB.com was never going to have to "go through the typical dog and pony show"<p>They're crazy hot.<p>There's "no doubt that [they'll] hit $100M in revenue fairly soon"<p>Remember the story about Zuck showing up in a bathrobe?<p>When you're the hot chick, you don't have to play by any rules.
$100 million in revenue... did they calculate that using Groupon accounting? meaning the retail price counts as revenue, even though it's sold at 50-70% off? And if they're selling stuff for other companies, then isn't the commission just the revenue, nothing more? I can't help but wonder if these numbers they quote are just greatly exaggerated.. I mean, they barely have a million members right now, and they can't all be buying stuff everyday.
I've been on Fab for a while now. I love the site, and have purchased a few things from it. That said, it's still a niche site. I'm a little confused as to how they are going to use a $40 million dollar investment. Is this to give them the ability to buy better deals from suppliers?
The Fab mobile app is pretty sexy on iOS. I haven't seen many apps that get me excited about mobile shopping, but this one always has me giddy about what cool items they'll dig up next.
By just throwing the RJ Metrics data at the VC's like that, aren't you asking them to do a lot of extra work that they shouldn't have to?<p>Wouldn't it be better to prepare some sort of story for you data, present that to them, then say, "Don't just take our word for it, take a look at the data for yourselves"? That way, they're sure not to miss the major components that differentiate your company.<p>(I obviously am no expert on this.)