A classic from Mark Suster on patience and pattern recognition for investors:

The first time I meet you, you are a single data point. A dot. I have no reference point from which to judge whether you were higher on the y-axis 3 months ago or lower. Because I have no observation points from the past, I have no sense for where you will be in the future. Thus, it is very hard to make a commitment to fund you.

For this reason I tell entrepreneurs the following: Meet your potential investors early. Tell them you’re not raising money yet but that you will be in the next 6 months or so. Tell them you really like them so you want them to have an early view (which is what all investor’s want). When you’re with them lower the bar by telling them, “we haven’t shipped product yet, we have lots of decisions still to make, but we’d like to show you our prototype” or obviously if you’re more advanced show what you have and what your roadmap looks like.

Because early-stage investing is such a long relationship game, this view seems obvious. But people still make snap decisions to jump into deals (both investors AND startups) based on who’s hot or who’s trendy, which they have little empirical evidence on performance, grit, commitment to do what they say, and other important data points.

(HT to Sandy for this one!)