(Source: Dilbert)
[Also published on Yourstory.in]
Earlier this week, I was invited to mentor the GSF Accelerator's startups on Pitching & Investors Decks. I thought I'd summarize what I said there.
I certainly don't claim any special knowledge on what makes for a good first investor presentation. There have been many books and blogs written about this. However, I've seen hundreds of investors pitches over the past several years of coaching CEOs on IPO roadshows, raising capital as a founder and listening to pitches as an investor. Heck, I've even been involved with investing in the leading presentation sharing company - Slideshare - which has helped accelerate a trend toward storytelling in presentations.
The first meeting is not about getting investors to agree to invest (although perhaps it is when you are looking at angel/micro-VC funding). The key is to start to develop the relationship and get them excited enough and intrigued enough to want to dive in deeper in a subsequent meeting.
You can greatly improve the odds of having a productive first meeting by telling a compelling story in a concise and hard-hitting manner. Make it personal. Hit the main high points first to generate and assess interest. Then provide backup to your claims to cement the story.
Here are the 4 key slides that you need to nail.
After these four slides, stop and assess your audience by asking them what they think, their key concerns etc. You should then be adept enough to address these concerns as you continue with the familiar series of slides on traction, product overview/roadmap/differentation, market sizing, business model, go-to-market, financial projections and funding requirement & milestones. Finish by showing the Investment Highlights slide again and summarizing the key points. Leave this slide up while you go through any final Q&A with the investors.
Some other guidelines and pet peeves:
- The point of the slide should be the title of the slide e.g. don't say "Team" as the title of the slide. Instead, say "Extensive Team Experience in Adtech" if you are doing an Adtech startup.
- The meeting is not about reading out the presentation, it's about your conversation and engagement with the investors, with the presentation as support material.
- No more than 2 minutes per slide. I've seen 30 minutes spent just on the first slide where the whole pitch is given with that one slide.
- You should be able to run through the presentation by yourself in less than 30 minutes.
- Place yourself between the investors and the projected or laptop-based deck. Otherwise you'll have the tennis match effect of spectators swiveling back and forth between the presentation deck and you.
- Don't leave the meeting without asking investors: "What do you think?", "What are your main concerns?", "What did you like specifically?"
- Know what your investors have invested in or said about your space before you meet them. The Web is your friend.
- Please don't take the slide deck I've embedded above as an example of the colors, fonts or layout that you should use.
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