Once we have your final query letter, we send it out within 24 hours, often within a few hours of receiving it -- though we generally send these out on Sunday nights through Thursday, to avoid sending out queries on weekends.  Then, when your e-query goes out under your own e-mail, you will generally hear back from some VCs within a few hours; most others will respond in 1-2 days.
 

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What do I need to be ready to use your service?  Do I need to have a completed business plan?

You generally will need a business plan, since investors will want to see this.  However, some clients use the service to test the level of interest in their idea and then plan to complete their plan within 1-2 weeks.   Ideally, your plan should be complete, but in many cases, you can send key parts of your plan (such as Executive Summary and information on your past track record, if any, your vision for the future, and key management personnel), and then provided the more detailed financials and other supporting documents with a week or two after that.

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Can you send out a query for me for a percentage of whatever I get?   I'd be willing to give you a [ercemtage of what I raise -- say 3-5%.

Unfortunately, we can't do this.  The e-mails go out under your own e-mail and any arrangements are between you and interested investors.   We have no way of tracking your results, unless you tell us, and we have no contract with you for taking a percentage or any way to enforce this, especially if you are in another state or country.   Plus you would be giving us far too much money for what we do in sending out a query or helping with your business plan.

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We just finished paying a huge sum to a consultant and at the end, we lost at all.   So we would rather reward your effort with an equity in your company.  It's forecast that when the company goes public in 4 years, your 2% worth would be about $4 million.  

While we appreciate the thought, we can't base our query service on a business model where we might get money from clients, no matter how much, in 4 years.   Also, you would be vastly overpaying for our service.  We certainly sympathize with your bad experience with an expensive business consultant, but we are only asking for a small amount -- $175 -- about the cost of a half hour to hour consultation -- and you will see results within the first day of sending out your query.

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Why don't you offer reports with e-mails, addresses, faxes, and phone numbers or sell lists or databases with this information?

We don't do this because many companies don't want this information distributed.  In putting together our databases, we have obtained many private e-mail addresses, so we can't give them out, but these contacts will give them to you when they respond to your query. 

Another reason we don't provide e-mails is because if these e-mails become circulated and used widely for queries by a number of people with business plans, particularly if they have poorly written plans, many venture capitalists will come to regard these queries as spam.  Then, they will become less receptive to read any e-mails and may change them.   The system works because we only send out occasional e-mail queries, and so we need to protect them.  Otherwise this could undermine this service for others.

Also, because of the ease of copying and circulating anything now, we don't provide our complete lists or databases with contact information, since anyone could copy our hard to put together lists.  Then, they could  promote a similar service, without the hundreds of hours and high expenses involved in putting together these databases and keeping them regularly updated.  Plus this would contribute to the spam problem and undermine the value of this service for everyone.

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How do you differ from the various venture capital sites that offer to sell CDs or software with contact information for VCs?

A key difference is that we send out an e-query for you or send you a file with already addressed letters and envelopes ready for mailing.  We also draw our information from dozens of sources and regularly update it.  Additionally, we target your query based on the type of funding you are seeking for your type of business; then send out your query using a special software.  If you tried to do this yourself, it would take you many hours and hundreds of dollars to buy all of this contact information, and you would then have to individually send out your letters.  We have systematized the process, so your query goes out faster, and we help you write a good letter as well.   With these CDs or software packages, you are on your own after that.

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What is your "success rate" for sending unsolicited query letters to VCs? Do these VCs read them and are your clients getting results with this strategy? 

We have just started sending out queries for the VC Connection, but if you look at our success in sending out queries to book editors, literary agents, syndicates, film producers, production companies, and film agents and managers, we know this process works.  Virtually all of our clients have gotten responses, showing that contacts do read these queries -- some as many as 40 to 60, even 100 or 200 responses, and about 80-90% of our clients have gotten requests to send in material for further consideration.   And many have signed with agents, syndicates, publishers, and producers -- including deals with some of the biggest, such as Random House, Simon & Schuster, Hyperion, William Morris, to name a few.  Go to our kudos section at PublishersAndAgents.Net to see some of their comments (from about 100 clients).   We can open the door for you and help you write a strong query letter that will be read.  Then, your success depends on the strength of your business plan.

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I'm not sure whether to send an e-mail query, postal query, or both?  What do you recommend?

A good way to start is using an e-mail queries to those contacts with e-mails and see what kind of response you get.  Then, you can send a postal query to selected contacts who didn't respond to your e-mail query or who don't have e-mails or accept e-mail submissions.   There is great variation in who is open to e-mails in different companies, and sometimes contacts who say they don't accept e-mail submissions do when you send a compelling query with a business that interests them.   However, we have dropped some contacts who have made it clear they never accept e-mails.

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How do you select the contacts for your queries?

We select them from our database of 4000+ names based on the criteria you select for types of funding, industries, and countries of interest. 

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Where do you get the names of your contacts and why can't I get them myself?

These names come from the major industry sources which are available to anyone either through published directories or online, many of which cost $100-300 for a CD or password to access the data.  So, sure, you could gather these names, type up lists, create a database, and organize the mailings yourself.  But we do this for you using our own database and mailing software, so we can quickly and easily select the VCs who would most likely be interested in your project and query them for you. 

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Can I contact VCs myself or do I need an agent or attorney already connected in this field? 

The answer is it depends.  With some larger companies, you may need to make your connections through someone in the industry already known to that VC.  But if you hit a VC the right way with a compelling e-query or letter, you might still break through directly. 
 

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Why should a successful  VC want to get e-mails from unknown people with business plans? Aren't the best VC's already swamped with queries?

Good VCs might well be receptive to such e-mails if you can send them a very short, compelling pitch that conveys the power of your business concept and model.  Then, they can quickly decide if they want more information. A good short query letter is the key to getting your project considered by a VC. 

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Won't VCs be turned off by getting e-mails from you, if they get a lot of e-mails from business people with poor business plans?  And if they get such e-mails, won't that make it difficult for me to query them myself?

First, the e-mails come from the person or management team with the business plan, using their personal or company e-mail addresses.  They do not come from us. Secondly, we provide a preliminary screening, and if someone has a project that sounds terrible, we would turn them down. Also, during this screening, we can advise a client if they have a poor query letter, so they can fix it, use one of our professional business plan writers, or hire their own.  Or we'll refund their fee. But if we do get clearly unpitchable plans, we're prepared to screen out such clients, because the continued success of this service depends on us sending out e-mails that our contacts want to read.  Then, too, as we grow, we may limit the number of clients we accept, so we don't send any contact more than 1-2 e-mails a day for our clients.

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How can a scattershot approach to a group of VCs work, since different companies are looking for different types of projects.

Yes, we absolutely agree.  That's why this isn't a scattershot approach. Rather, we have categorized VCs and their companies according to the major funding levels and industries they are interested in.  And we can further limit the query to selected countries.  Plus if there are VCs you don't want us to contact, we can screen them out of the VCs to contact. 
 

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How do I know these VCs are still in their positions or actively looking for deals?  What if they leave their company or go out of business?  How do you keep your lists up-to-date?

We constantly keep our lists up to date in several ways.  First, whenever we add new contacts, we do a test mailing to them and drop any listings if we get return e-mails or the contacts advise us they don't want to receive e-mails.   Secondly, each time we do a mailing, we use any returned e-mails to clean our list.  Thirdly, we regularly check industry sources to get new listings and make changes accordingly.  We also make phone calls direct to these companies or check Web sites to check on additions.  Then, we send all new listings an e-mail to test them out. 

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I'm a member of an entrepreneurs' group and can get referrals to VCs from other members.  Why would I need your service?

If you can get a great referral from a personal contact, great.  But often the VC may be busy or may not be right for your type of business.   Also, our service will give you a much greater range of interested VCs to follow-up with than relying on your personal network. 

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Why can't I do my own mailing to VCs using their e-mails or addresses?  Why do I need your query service?