We (Sparkplay Media) announced today that we closed on a $4.25 million Series A round from Redpoint Ventures and Prism Ventureworks.

Closing this investment round has been both exciting and, to be frank, a bit scary. There was definitely a bit of giddiness on my part when I first saw the money hit our ban account, supplanted within 12 hours by a sense of crushing responsibility. I’ve certainly never seen that much money in one place before, much less under my control.

I’m not going to talk in detail about the process but three things about raising VC money stuck out to me:

  1. Everybody warned me that raising a Series A would be a full-time job. They’re dirty liars. It’s two or three full-time jobs, encompassing every single waking moment for months straight. Endless meetings, endless documentation/presentation re-writes. I’m sure it’s easier if you’ve done it before and are a known quantity, or if you have a major league reputation, but I don’t fall into either of those categories.
  2. Before deciding to raise VC money, my view of them generally was along the “vulture capital” line. I was prepared to really be put through the ringer and find myself getting screwed at every turn. These are guys who control immense amounts of investment money and I was expecting that a lot of VCs would be cynical, dismissive people whom I had to kind of hold my nose to deal with. The reality was literally the opposite. I think out of all the VCs we met, there was only one that I actively didn’t like. Almost all of the ones I met with (which is probably not a representative slice, as we took a fairly targeted approach to fundraising) were very sharp, genuinely interested in what we were doing, and showed no sign of trying to force us into any kind of deal that was untoward or bad for us. I really liked almost every VC I met, which makes sense I suppose: Their job is to attract good entrepreneurs and they’d quickly cease to do so if they acted like the jackasses some people make them out to be.
  3. Our plans morphed a fair amount between deciding to raise VC money and actually doing so. These guys are really good at forcing you to think through exactly what you’re doing and why you’re doing it. Even VCs we didn’t end up taking money from contributed in this way.

It came down to choosing between two deals for us (each with a syndicate of two VC firms), which was a great position to be in, though it was much harder than I had anticipated to turn investors down. By the time you’re offered a term sheet, you’ve probably gotten to know your potential investors a bit and feel a bit of a personal bond with them (at least I did).

We’re extremely happy to have chosen the investors we did (there were no bad choices between the two deals on the table at the end of the process…only a great deal and a slightly greater deal). As a bonus, one of our board members (Fouad ElNaggar from Redpoint) is a Rock Band god. His band, “the Red Stained Lips” is currently ranked in the top 10 worldwide (though has been as high as #2 I believe). Serious gaming cred!

(In case they are reading this, so that they don’t feel left out, I want to thank Scott Raney@Redpoint, and Will Kohler and Bong Koh from Prism as well. You guys rock, just not as literally as Fouad!)