Sid Trivedi

I highly recommend that VCs take notes during meetings with founders. This allows you to assess how a team is doing at a point in time (their approach to the market, product, traction, team and more). I would also record what your own perspectives were during that meeting and what decision you ended up making. You can reflect on these notes when taking meetings with the same founders for subsequent rounds and also when assessing what ended up happening to the company in later years.

There are a few different schools of thought on whether pitch decks should be used during presentations with VCs. I recommend using a deck. Ultimately you only have a finite amount of time with investors and want to get your point of view across rather than run a Q&A process where the investor can pull the conversation in whichever way they want. Spend time putting together a high-quality deck of ~15 slides that covers market, team, product, metrics, round size/construction and what you plan to do with the capital raised. Practice pitching with colleagues and friends before going to a formal investor pitch.

While it wasn't true 10 years ago, today many security customers spend time with founders by attending events hosted by startups and VC firms. The focus for most of these practitioners is to become either advisors or investors in the best startups. But if you want to move up to senior leadership positions then I believe this is the wrong strategy. The most innovative customers I know spend time understanding the most relevant startup technologies for their organization. Once they have identified these startups, they take a risk and become early design partners and ultimately paid customers. Their companies benefit from innovative tech at reduced prices and they end up with a big promotion as recognition for going above and beyond.

To invest in the best startups, you need to first meet the best founders. And it's really hard to do that if you keep bouncing between sectors. That's why focus matters. Pick a primary and secondary sector that you want to spend time in (e.g. cybersecurity, sales, logistics, marketplaces). Read as much as you can about those two sectors. Find out what are the two biggest trade shows in each sector and sign up to attend. Do the research and come in prepared knowing a little bit about the industry and some questions you want to get answered. You will meet new contacts who will fit into three buckets - founders, operators (at incumbents or customers) and investors. Each will provide keen insight to help you become a better investor.

Running simulations and providing courses is one method. Another is to share information on recent attacks at peer companies. Explain these attacks in relatable language (not technical lingo) by sharing what happened and what the damage to the organization and the employee was. The more employees can relate to events at peer companies (particularly recent ones they may have also read about in the news), the more interested they will be in building a first line of defense against a future cyberattack.

Today there are some clear winners in the EDR market - CrowdStrike, Microsoft and SentinelOne - due to a combination of their unique detection capabilities, light agent deployments, and consistent updates. There are a few players I wouldn't recommend picking such as Bitdefender and Cybereason. They haven't been very innovative and typically are not supported or used by most security analysts. It's important to ask other customers in your market what they are using.