frontpage.
newsnewestaskshowjobs

Made with ♥ by @iamnishanth

Open Source @Github

fp.

Open in hackernews

Ask HN: What usually happens after a VC asks for a demo?

12•stijo•14h ago
I had a VC call that went well. They asked for a demo, mentioned looping in an operating partner, and I shared details etc. Since then it’s been quiet (a day or two).

For folks who’ve raised before or worked in VC: Is this typically just internal review time, or does silence after a demo usually signal a pass?

Not looking for validation, just trying to understand how this phase usually plays out.

Thanks.

Comments

malux85•11h ago
A day or two is nothing. Building these relationships takes time.

When I finished raising my pre-seed round I had a big list of investors that I had talked to, some a warm, some said no, some said yes. I always asked them if I could put them on my cool updated list, and then shared fun things with them (short emails - 4 sentences and a screenshot, hey look what we did!)

By the time it came to raise seed we were 2.5x oversubscribed in 2 weeks - because I had spent the previous year relationship building with all of them.

Remember VCs are reviewing a bunch of companies all at once, you are not the only thing they have to think about today.

Follow up in a few days, and send a short (20 seconds max) video attached in case they don’t have time to organise to see the demo.

VCs are busy so “do the work” for them, don’t ask a question - ask a question, anticipate the answer and then send the answer too.

These are long term relationships you are building so treat them as such.

brettgriffin•11h ago
If there was serious interest, they would taken a next step by now. They won't give you a hard no unless you're an absolute joke.

They will wait and see if there's any deal heat.

Are you talking to other funds? You need to talk to as many funds as possible in a 2-3 week period to create leverage. Do not talk to a single or small number of funds in a process[0]. Best case they will snake the round at a discount, worst case you'll give up a ton of leverage and kill the process.

[0] unless you have close relationships with a stable of funds. you do not.

varshith17•3h ago
2 days is nothing, VCs move slower than founders think. Demo review usually takes 1-2 weeks: partner watches it, discusses in Monday meeting, maybe loops in domain expert, then decides next steps. Silence for a week is normal. Silence for 3+ weeks without follow-up means soft pass. If you haven't heard anything in 10 days, polite check-in is fine.
muzani•2h ago
The good ones understand that 3 weeks to a startup is like half a year to an established company, especially in the earliest stages. At a later stage, a VC may well take more time, but there's less damage and lower risk appetited.

Anyone with access to money can do VC, but generally past some point of slowness, good founders just don't take the money as it does more harm than good. It's also faster and cheaper to get to market these days, and there's too much opportunity cost going around for months asking people what they think for $100k instead of directly going to market.

Ask HN: Gmail spam filtering suddenly marking everything as spam?

171•goopthink•17h ago•113 comments

Ask HN: What's the current best local/open speech-to-speech setup?

243•dsrtslnd23•1d ago•61 comments

Ask HN: Have we confused efficiency with "100% utilization"?

24•nickevante•13h ago•13 comments

Ask HN: What usually happens after a VC asks for a demo?

12•stijo•14h ago•4 comments

Ask HN: Do you have any evidence that agentic coding works?

454•terabytest•4d ago•450 comments

Ask HN: Career transition question – assistance, MLOps guidance

4•Pierre_Esteves•11h ago•0 comments

Ask HN: May an agent accept a license to produce a build?

26•athrowaway3z•19h ago•47 comments

Tell HN: 2 years building a kids audio app as a solo dev – lessons learned

136•oliverjanssen•3d ago•77 comments

Ask HN: Seeeking help to reverse engineer a PCB

20•Dlg001•2d ago•9 comments

Ask HN: Why does the number of datasets on data.gov vary so much?

7•akudha•13h ago•3 comments

Ask HN: Thinking about memory for AI coding agents

5•hoangnnguyen•22h ago•5 comments

Ask HN: What are some good unintuitive statistics problems?

6•ronbenton•17h ago•6 comments

Ask HN: Rust and AI builders interested in local-first, multi-agent systems?

3•cajazzer•14h ago•8 comments

Coding assistants are slow. So we multitask

3•brunaxLorax•10h ago•8 comments

Ask HN: How to redeem a gift card without risking lock-out?

6•magnetic•15h ago•6 comments

Ask HN: Weekend Social: Top two programming languages and what they can borrow?

3•susam•15h ago•6 comments

Ask HN: Where is society heading, is there a plan for a jobless future?

16•evo_9•1d ago•33 comments

Ask HN: Why are so many rolling out their own AI/LLM agent sandboxing solution?

32•ATechGuy•4d ago•14 comments

Ask HN: General purpose search engine that will respect special characters?

3•what-if•15h ago•3 comments

Ask HN: How do you AI code from your phone?

5•splitbrain•1d ago•1 comments

Ask HN: Do you "micro-manage" your agents?

7•xinbenlv•1d ago•8 comments

Ask HN: Revive a mostly dead Discord server

20•movedx•4d ago•28 comments

Locked out of my GCP account for 3 days, still charged, can't redirect domain

14•lifeoflee•1d ago•3 comments

Ask HN: Where do you look for semiconductor jobs?

4•johncole•1d ago•8 comments

Ask HN: Does DDG no longer honor "site:" prefix?

19•everybodyknows•2d ago•6 comments

Ask HN: LLMs for new job categories?

6•aavci•1d ago•2 comments

Ask HN: Best practice securing secrets on local machines working with agents?

9•xinbenlv•2d ago•11 comments

Tell HN: AI is all about the tools (for now)

3•keepamovin•22h ago•0 comments

ChatGPT has no real-time clock – time awareness is essential

3•Stehpwtimace•23h ago•1 comments

Ask HN: How do you authorize AI agent actions in production?

6•naolbeyene•2d ago•5 comments