I have had the opportunity to be at several startup events where investors of various calibers are present, and the consensus is always the same. Your pitch is the most important part of securing investment. Believe it or not majority of what your 25 page business plan contains is never read by these investors and so it matters little what you try to sell on there especially if you are a new entrepreneur. Ofcourse you need a business plan but what you say or do in the first few minutes of your pitch is what seals your fate more often than not.
Imagine you are an investor, you receive 30-50 business plans every day, most of which are atleast 20 pages long. What would you do? will you carefully read through every line of every page of each plan? That’s what I thought. This is why you must make your pitch a winner.
Undoubtedly it’s almost mission impossible to secure a sit-down with any investor, so your options are limited. If you don’t run into them on a light day in an elevator, you might never see them in person. Emails and phone calls are the only other options, if you don’t have an inside man. I personally think email is the best. 99% of the time if you call, you will either get the machine or the assistant who claims the investor will call you back, but you know that will never happen. When you write your email pitch make sure you cover the basics:
· 1. – Immediately point out what you want at the beginning. Loads of people who send emails in to investors beat around the bush, talking themselves up or talking the investor up. This is not necessary, actually it could damage your chances. Most times they are checking these emails in the middle of the day’s hustle and bustle from their blackberry. If they see the first two lines lack substance, I am sure you can imagine what they will do next, move on to the next email! So make sure to point out what you want and why you want it from them in the first two lines. If you catch their attention, they will read on and save your email to reply you later.
· 2 -Tell them what your product is about. Site the problem, tell them you have done your research and so and so number of people have this same problem daily. Proceed to tell them that your product/service is the solution and why it is. In a video I watched of investor Chris Sacca, he mentioned what I have heard several investors say, niche problems are not what they look for, be on a larger scale with your venture, this gives you a broader scale to maneuver should your initial idea not work out as planned.
· 3 -While you don’t have to list all your competitors, you should immediately highlight why or how you stand out. Why is your product different? Why is it better? You can list your competitors and do a complete comparison in your business plan, but right now, all that matters is how you differ in 2 lines. They usually don’t have time for more.
· 4 -Tell of your market. Briefly touch on how strong your market is and how you intend to break into it. Investors like this part. They care about how they will make their money and how soon, so if you tell them 1 billion people will benefit from this, they will most likely be more interested than if you say my college campus will benefit from this. Get my drift?
· 5 -Tell them why YOU are the person for this venture. I have found that the best way to do this is by sharing the strength of your team, how capable you are and if you have experience, do not shy away from indication your past successes. They will rather do business with people who have succeeded before than otherwise anyway. If you don’t have any experience, all hope is not lost, just come up with creative ways of showing to this person that your team is more than able.
