Here’s one needy tech entrepreneur who needs to work on his fundraising pitch.
Francis Pedraza, founder of a tech startup called Everest, blew his chances with billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban yesterday when he told the 54-year-old executive he’s lucky to get the chance to invest with him — right before asking the owner of the Dallas Mavericks basketball team for money.
“Peter Thiel invested so you’re lucky I’m e-mailing you,” Pedraza wrote to Cuban in an e-mail.
“You want to invest in [Everest],” wrote Pedraza, whose company helps people identify and work toward their goals.
Thiel, a billionaire venture capitalist and PayPal co-founder, contributed to a $300,000 investment last year, sources said.
The brazen pitch pushed Cuban to Twitter, where he wrote: “How Not To Get an Investment from me — Make this the subject.”
Reached by phone, Pedraza said he had intended the abrasive pitch as a way to get the attention of Cuban, a notoriously outspoken investor regularly pitched for money on the television series “Shark Tank.”
“I normally do it in a much more gracious way,” he said. “My sense of his style is he likes aggressive selling.”
“I thought for somebody like Cuban it would have put a smile on his face,” said the 23-year-old Cornell graduate, who now realizes his aggressive style was a “mistake.”
To be sure, Pedraza has persuaded other stalwart names to part with their money, suggesting that his flubbed attempt at wooing Cuban was indeed a fluke.
In addition to the $300,000, Everest recently received $1.2 million from a group that includes Milwaukee Brewers owner Mark Attanasio and hedge-fund manager Jim Palotta, he said.