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Do Not Interrupt Your Partner

Continuing with the theme of compatibility, I wanted to address one aspect of presentation etiquette: interrupting your partners during a pitch to a VC. If your partner is speaking during a presentation let them finish their thoughts. Cutting them off makes your team look bad and leads VCs to think:

  1. That you guys can't coordinate well and do not make a highly functional team,
  2. That you are desperate,
  3. That you are going to interrupt VCs when they are on your board, and
  4. That your team is not going to be effective at business development (it's not hard to imagine you interrupting each other in front of partners and customers).

One easy way to avoid appearing like a two-headed monster is to appoint one person to be the lead presenter.  The secondary presenter should add important insights along the way, but not compete for air time.

This might seem like an obvious point, however, I see it happen frequently. This is an easy thing to avoid - so do yourself a favor and be thoughtful about this.

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