A competitive industry doesn't mean people don't talk to each other. In fact people talk to each other all of the time. Everyone knows that the startup industry is competitive. In fact, it's hyper competitive. People try to get a leg up on each other and out-do each other. It's the nature of the industry.
Believe it or not there actually is a fair amount of cooperation. And I don't mean cooperation where people are friendly with each other at some meet-up event or whatever. There are tons of meet-ups in Houston, Texas and Dallas, Texas. Meeting up and cooperating at these things is easy. Everyone does that. Of course that's good, but it's not really what I'm talking about here.
What I'm talking about is energy venture capital investors talking to each other and cooperating in other capacities.
As a lawyer in the entrepreneurial space, I've been to 'events' where it's really just these investors sitting at home talking to each other in front of their fire place. Yeah, I know--fireplaces in Texas, right? But these events are not quite the events I want to talk about today (by the way, those home fireplace 'events' are pretty damn important too).
The kinds of events I want to highlight today is a little different from that that. There are round table events for VC investors where VCs cooperate with each other. Investors in the oil and gas, clean energy tech industry get together and talk to one another. Some times it's formal, some times not. I'm going to give you a specific example of how this works.
So here it goes: these investors go to round tables and discuss the needs and wants of each other and they try to reach out to groups to see if someone can fit that profile. These events happen in multiple cities around the country. Of course Dallas and Houston are hot hubs for the the oil and gas venture capital industry, but these events also take place in Philadelphia, Boston, Phoenix, etc. Remember, a lot of investors like to focus on certain industries and/or companies with certain risk profiles. So even if a company is not the appropriate investment for them, they might be connected to someone who is.
Let's say you meet an investor that primarily does small seed round investments in renewable energy startups and your startup is focused on a certain type of rigging equipment. Additionally, your company is on the Series A level. Still, talk to the person. They might have a roundtable event next week in Washington D.C. where they connect with those that are focused on the area you're focused on.
So with all of that in mind--what's the takeaway from knowing that these investor private round tables exist? The takeaway is that you need to keep doing what you should be doing which is to keep talking to investors, to keep presenting, and to keep pushing your message out.