While it is true that entrepreneurship (and startup investing) require risk-taking, this focus on risk-taking can lead entrepreneurs to neglect the critical task of risk reduction.

During a recent meeting with some founders, I walked them through some of the key ways that they could reduce the perceived risk of investing in their company. They had a good team, and a great set of relationships within the industry that would help with go-to-market. They also demonstrated a working prototype for their consumer hardware and application.

My advice to the founders was to focus on collecting user engagement data to show that consumers would adopt and be retained over time.

They wondered why I would focus on this prosaic metric, rather than focusing on more “sexy” areas like the technology or the size of the opportunity.

“Risk reduction,” I replied.

Not only does reducing perceived risk increase your chances of raising money from investors, it often improves the investment terms as well.

There is no way to eliminate all risk from investing in a startup. (Anyone who tells potential investors that there is no risk is either lying or delusional, and definitely wrong.) But assuming that an investor is willing to write a check, the final lever that they can pull to reduce their risk is the reduce the price that they are paying. In other words, a lower valution.

Lowering the valuation won’t make an investor invest if they don’t believe the startup will succeed; after all, any percentage ownership of a worthless company is still worthless. But it just might tip the expected value enough in the positive direction to change a “maybe” into a “yes.”

If you’re not happy with the valuations you’ve been offered, don’t just try to increase the perceived size of the opportunity; remember to reduce the perceived risk as well.