11 September 2018, Hyderabad: Remember the sleepless nights before pitching to investors and the remorse afternoons when your pitch has not impressed them. Both the feelings are really odd and leave us most frustrated. Even a great product might not find takers due to a wrong pitch. After working with early stage investment banking organisations, my insights on the issue in the present scenarios, have been listed below.
Every startup would like to get good investments to scale up to the next level and get closer to convert their dreams into reality. During the process I reached out to many of my colleagues and scanned the info highway to design a five point sequence for quality outputs.
I strongly feel that the founders are the correct people to prepare the pitch decks and present them to potential investors. If you have to get the best impression of the investors choose the time slot after lunch, preferably around 3 pm. Dress well. This would be the right time when the investor would be quite settled to understand the narration.
I call it narration because only a good story would yield positive results. Hence master the art of storytelling to grab investor’s attention. Be strategic and design your USP in just a two liner which should highlight the problem and solution. And don’t use jargons like disruptive, first time in the world or any supernatural words. People must feel that way, from your speech but not by bragging about.
Prepare a pitch that suffices for the investors and do not present your product pitch. Give a holistic approach to your narration and do not be superficial. In short, talk about your product, features that act as differentiators, team and target markets. Know your revenue model and the ways to scale it up.
Be authentic about your startup and hint about the competitors, so that the listener understands that you have validated the market. Always talk about your weakness and how you overcame about the issue. That would make the presentation more realistic,
Never talk about buyout or M&A as an exit option, especially when you go into first round of funding. This would portray you as a short term player and would influence the decision against you.
Conclude talk from the investor’s point of view, by stating what the dividends would be and when you wish to give them the exit. Give them a structured plan at the time of exit. This would give the investor confidence to accompany you in your journey.
Way2World wishes more startups would get funding as the number of investors is increasing. Many global investors want to foray into our country owing to good markets and precise innovative skills. With inputs from internet 0 RajKishan