Any and every business founder comes to a venture capitalist for one reason: To ask them for funding. In venture capital fundraising land, you need to ‘pitch’. But then you know that. What you probably don’t know is how to get it right. So we’re going to make this easier for you with a few tips that you can use to make the perfect pitch.
1. Have A Story
The best way to open your pitch by narrating real incidences. Use real names and real incidents where you have helped a customer overcome a challenge. Keep it simple, avoid buzzwords and jargon. Lead with facts that will make you an immediate rockstar in the eyes of the investor.
A good example of this is: “So as you know, my name is John and I’m the CEO of a Software service company. I founded this with my cofounder a year ago and we’ve already scaled to $1.5m ARR.” Boom. You have attention.
Investors are always looking at you with the following parameters:
· How good of an evangelist is this person going to be for their company?
· Is this someone I would want to go to work for?
So keep this in mind.
2. You don’t have to lay it all on the table!
Have an objective. Communicate only the things that matter, because your first meeting is supposed to be a summation of the compelling stuff. A first meeting is meant to lead to future detailed meetings on each point. So don’t let one particular angle about you take up the entire time. Be cognizant about your time and ensure you cover all the important points.
3. Act like a teacher, not a student
Remember your investor meeting is not an exam. There are no ideal answers and there is no pass and fail mark. So don’t act like you are a student coming to take an exam.
Instead, you need to ‘teach’ and ‘educate’. You need to explain to the investors why they should work with you. They want to know all the answers before they put their money on you. So go out there with all the confidence!
4. Talk about yourself
It’s important to know that investors believe in people first, and then ideas. Make your investors feel confident about you. Show them your accomplishments and the accomplishments of your team and make them believe that they are doing the right thing by investing their money.
5. Give the numbers that are behind your numbers
Don’t say you’re going to be a $50 million business in three years, because most investors won’t even believe it—unless you’ve done this before in another company.
What’s more important to talk about is how you will reach those millions; so share your business model and why you feel you are likely to reach the projected number.
6. Before you finish up, keep this in mind!
Your final act should be to find out what additional information you can provide the investors. If you get a detailed list, act on it the same day or the next one to show you are responsive. Asking what information to provide them creates a new touchpoint to follow up as well as clarity on where you stand.
We hope this will help all the budding entrepreneurs out there! Now go and prepare your pitch! Just nail it.