24. What are the signs of an entrepreneur who is over- prepared for meetings with investors? Just a few thoughts to add. Things that are a negative for me and are sort of in the “over-prepared” category: • A written business plan. A deck is great and a detailed operating plan in a Google Sheet or Excel is an A+++ but ... a traditional, 20+ page written business plan though tells me you don’t know how to start building the product, but instead, need to just talk about it more. • Too many / wrong folks at pitch. Never, ever bring a consultant or anyone that isn’t an employee. Never bring someone that isn’t full-time. Ever. Bringing a wing- man is great. It shows you have a team. Bringing 2 with you -- only do this if there’s a real reason to do so. • A thoughtful exit strategy. I’m entering not exiting. This tells me you may take the first off ramp. Which may be the right thing for you but -- I immediately lose confidence in Unicorn potential. • Talking too much about my other investments / my portfolio. Cool you know the companies but kind of weird when you know them too well. It’s not your space, not directly at least. • Talking about specific terms (too much / too early). Telling me the exact terms of the raise in a pitch or when we’ve just met ... unless you’ve already closed a lead and therefore have real terms is too rookie. Telling me how much you want to raise -- very helpful. Dictating very specific terms before you are in a position to do so before we’re looking to do a deal together tells me I may not want to work with you. It tells me you may be trying to over-engineer something that shouldn’t be over-engineering at this stage. SAASTR.COM 23