Tips For Preparing Your Pitch
The basics of any pitch are normally presented in a slide deck and cover the following points:
- Problem
- Solution
- Market (needs to be fast growing, big potential)
- Competitive Advantage (what makes you uniquely able to solve the problem better than anyone else)
- Proof that your solution works (i.e., traction with customers)
- Team (Demonstrate domain expertise and experience with rapidly iterating towards finding product/market solutions)
- Terms of financing
When preparing a pitch, keep in mind that: (1) you are not trying to close the deal, you are only trying to create enough interest so that the investor wants to learn more, (2) know your audience and gear the pitch accordingly (i.e., don’t get technical with investors that are not industry experts, but do when the investors know the industry well), (3) tell a story, keep it interesting, (4) practice, practice, practice.
Check Out Available Resources
There are many resources available when crafting your pitch for investors; check out some of our favorites listed below. Another helpful exercise is to search "Demo Day Pitch" on Youtube and look through as many different pitches as you can as if you were an investor.
Process of approaching many investors:
- David Lee: The Executive Summary
- Raising Venture Capital
- The Art of the Elevator Pitch - Harvard Business Review
Pitch deck examples:
- http://www.pitchenvy.com/
- http://bestpitchdecks.com/
- http://nextviewventures.com/blog/free-startup-pitch-decks-template/
- https://articles.bplans.com/what-to-include-in-your-pitch-deck/
Guy Kawasaki:
- Youtube: 10:20:30 Pitch Rule (based on Art of the Start)
- Book: Art of the Start
- Pitch deck template
David Rose:
Dave McClure:
Paul Graham:
