Venture Capital Hustle on Hold as Video Calls Replace Coffees
- Travel restrictions prevent companies from meeting investors
- Bigger concerns mount as the pandemic rips through economy
This article is for subscribers only.
Cristina Vila was supposed to be in Silicon Valley on Wednesday morning for one of the most important meetings of her career. Instead, the entrepreneur was hunkered down in a vacation home in a remote mountain village in the Pyrenees filled with sacks of rice and dried fruits.
She was forced to pitch her two-year-old company, London-based startup Cledara Ltd., to a group of investors over a video conference. Vying with other finalists in the Female Founders Competition, Vila presented a demo of her company’s software management tools and fielded questions from a venture capital firm led by philanthropist Melinda Gates using Microsoft Teams. She expects to hear whether she won the $2 million in funding in early April.