Good Listener, Helpful Feedback
Fund: Fairhaven Capital
Posted by Matt Eagar on 2008-04-09
Fairhaven Capital is just setting up shop (in fact, we met with them at 101 Federal St in Boston, and their website now lists an address in Cambridge), although the partners are all experienced VCs from TD Capital Ventures.
We pitched to Mark Hatfield, formerly of TD Capital as well as Motorola Ventures. This was one of our first VC pitches back in February, and Mark was great. He came prepared to our meeting, having reviewed our executive summary beforehand. He put us at ease, and listened intently throughout (turned off the ringer of his Blackberry when it rang ten minutes into the presentation, maintained eye contact, asked good questions at appropriate times, etc).
I was glad that Mark seemed to understand what we are doing and the uniqueness of our idea. He had some great feedback at the time, including suggestions as far as potential business partners that we have run with since. Later, he was open in sharing specific and helpful feedback from his partners (we sold them on our idea, but not the market size). Overall, a positive experience.