Tips for Pitching to Investors

When you find yourself in front of an investor, it means your business plan has done its job.  It is now up to your pitching to bring home the bacon. 

 

As an Angel Investor, I had the privilege of seeing hundreds of entrepreneurs and small businesses pitch their ideas over the years.  By only reviewing the business plan behind these ideas, one cannot tell with any amount of certainty, which idea is a hit and which a dud.  Therefore, a pitch to the investor by the entrepreneur or senior executive becomes necessary.  At this stage, one may find that a poor pitch will make a good idea leave the arena empty handed, while a good pitch will make a not too great of an idea walks away with all the loot. 

 

Here are a few tips that when observed, will help you clinch your desired investment.

 

 

Get to the point quickly.  One will never really know how long any meeting with an investor will actually last.  Therefore, make your key points quickly and early, as you may not get a chance to make them at all.

Tell them what you do first.  Capture the attention of the audience in 30 sec with an elevator pitch that includes exactly what you do.  This is very important.

Talk about your background.  Investors invest in people through business.  Therefore, make sure that you provide an argument for why they should invest in you.  This is critical.  Include information concerning other key team members and advisors if there is time.

Know your competition intimately.  You should be able to discuss details about your competition and be very clear about how you will position yourself against the competition.  You are not unique, there is competition everywhere, and do not underestimate the importance of the competition.

Be specific about revenue.  Do your market research and be specific about the revenue opportunity.  Make assumptions and guesses when putting together your revenue projections, but make sure they are very realistic.  Do not claim to have a very small percentage of an enormous market, show it in your financials.  Give examples of similar products, track them, and use them as base for your projections.

Tell them exactly what you need and how they will benefit.  Be specific about how much money you need from the investors, how you will use it, and how they will get their return on this investment.

Know your product.  You need to know your pitch inside and out.  You should not be spending time looking at the screen or reading the slides, which suggests that you are not comfortable with the material.  Practice your pitch until you are completely confident about giving the presentation.  You should be able to continue to make your points without the slides or any other aid.

Demonstrate your product only when necessary.  Do not demonstrate your product when pitching.  Investor wants to hear about the business opportunity, not watch a product demo. If it is necessary to demonstrate you product, use visuals to help the investor understand how the technology fits together.  Investors do not really want to know all of the technical details; they just needed to understand the big picture.

 

 

 

What are your top tips for creating an awesome pitch?