The ultimate Step-by-Step Guide
- Know your Potential Investors
- Make a Presentation
- Prepare a killer Elevator Speech
- Practice & Perfect your eSpeech
- Present yourself well (ie, suit-able)
- Outline the Problem by telling a story
- Keep your story engaging
- Pitch your Solution
- Use realistic Data
- Know more about your audience
- Learn your revenue model
- Mention your success stories
- Prepare a succession plan
- Introduce your team
- Let them know about your financials
Idea. Do you have a brilliant idea in mind – that you want to seek funding and resources for, but don’t know how? Well, you’re in luck because we’re here to dish out the ultimate guide on how to pitch an idea to investors.
Tip. A friendly little tip before we proceed, it’ll be easier for you to connect the dots of the process if you’ve read our previous article on Series A, B, and C funding. It has all the essential information to help you map out the things you’ll need to highlight in your business pitch.
If you’re all set and ready, grab your note-taking tools, and we’ll dive right in.
How to Pitch Your Idea to Investors
Target your Audience. Investors are the most powerful segment of your audience that you’ll be pitching your business idea to. They have the ability to influence the rise and fall of your startup, so it’s important to impress them during your pitch if you want to nail that funding. To know just how to do that, here’s a step-by-step guide on how to give a remarkable sales pitch that will gain the attention of everyone in the room, especially your investors.
1. Know Your Potential Investors
Research is important in any undertaking. That’s why the first step is to know who your potential investors are, their history, and their track record. What other startups have they invested in? Can you see a pattern? What are the key points that might have attracted them to those startups? Know who your audience is so you can plan the rest of your pitch accordingly.
2. Make a Presentation
Consider what type of pitch you’d like to deliver. Will it be the usual startup pitch delivered by its CEO? Or, it could be the team pitch that brings the developers and other significant members to the stage. From here, you can choose what theme you’d like to embed into your presentation, whether it be fun, serious, or creative.
Creative presentations are great if your Minimum Viable Product or MVP requires a bit more than just the imagination to visualize. For example, you could use holograms and other creative stimuli to make your presentation more engaging.
Serious. Sometimes, though, you might need to prepare a more serious presentation, which is equally intriguing and appealing. For this type, we recommend that you check out the templates on SlidesGo for inspiration on how to make your own presentation. All of the pitch deck templates there can be used and customized for free.
3. Prepare a killer Elevator Speech
Imagine being alone in an elevator with your potential investors. You’re heading to different floors and the only chance you have of speaking with them is in that short time frame together. Time is of the essence. Your speech has to be short, memorable, and impactful to capture their interest.
Short. It’s a lot of pressure, but if you can carefully package your business idea into a speech that can be delivered in less than a minute, you’ll leave a very good impression on your audience. Hopefully, good enough for them to ask for your contact details so they can know more about you and your MVP!
4. Practice your L.Speech
Repetition and practice make any task less daunting and intimidating. They can help you master the inner workings of your MVP so you’ll be able to anticipate and answer whatever probing questions your investors might throw at you with ease and confidence. They can also help you learn how to address the backstage jitters and other unwanted reflexes or movements you may have while pitching.
5. Present Yourself Well & Suitable
Stage presence is a must-have when you’re pitching an idea. First impressions matter, and you only have one chance to make a good one. This includes how you carry yourself, and how you look. Get enough sleep so you can arrive early to your meeting, confident, alert, and ready for whatever comes next. If you’re looking for more layers of armor to protect – you on the battlefield, then suit up and power dress. Nothing screams “I mean business” more than a crisp business suit on stage. It’ll leave the impression that as the chief executive officer or developer of a startup, you can present yourself well as the representative of your business.
6. Outline the Problem by Telling a Story
Giving a monotonous pitch about your MVP is a surefire way to discourage any investors from helping you secure the much-needed funding. So, when you deliver your pitch, try to outline the problem you want to give a solution to by telling a story. This approach is easier to follow as stories provide pictures for the imagination, and they are infinitely more relatable than bullets upon bullets of bookish information about your MVP. If you can let your audience in for a ride on your train of thought, they might enjoy it and ask to be taken to the next stations.
7. Keep your Story engaging
To keep your audience engaged, you should have an intriguing pitch deck presentation and compelling storytelling. Your pitch could be as short as an elevator speech or as long as 18 minutes. Be strategic with your pacing and make sure that you have ample time leftover to entertain any questions from your panel of potential investors.
8. Pitch your Solution
Once you’re able to establish a good foundation for your MVP in terms of what the problem is that you’re trying to solve, the climax of your pitch is to tell your audience about the solution that you can offer the market. Provide well-researched scenarios of how your MVP can play a vital role in addressing a problem that society will benefit from. Remember, the investors aren’t looking for just another mundane solution. They want novel solutions, and that’s what you should strive to deliver !!!
9. You must use realistic Data
In the first step, we highlighted the importance of doing your research. Part of this research should be realistic data that you can use to support your MVP pitch. If you don’t have them yet, don’t worry because it’s not too late to seek out your needed facts and numbers. Just make sure that your data is up-to-date and taken from a reliable source. Adding statistics to your business pitch will give your audience an idea of the current state of the playing field. Some investors look for these data and use them as a basis for how much funds to give, too.
10. Know your Audience
While it’s important to know about your potential investors, you shouldn’t discount the information that you can get about the rest of your audience. Appealing to a wider segment of the population suggests that your MVP is an idea with a larger potential for growth. Depending on how well you delivered your pitch, one of your audiences may ask for more information about it. This can be an indication of consumer acceptability that investors also consider before investing.
11. Learn your Revenue Model
It will not be enough to just have a well-built Minimum Viable Product (MVP). Since investors will be putting their money into your work, they will want information about your business model and revenue strategy. After all, investing entails getting a profit in return. How do you plan on paying back your investors? How much could they potentially earn from this venture?
Planned? Traditional investor companies are usually very interested in this because it reflects how far you’ve thought and planned out you. Providing a blueprint of how your MVP is expected to return any investment shows that you are ready to enter the market.
12. Sell your Success Story
If you’re just starting out, a success story might not be something that you have under your belt just yet. That’s alright, investors will understand. But if you do have a success story that is worth mentioning about your MVP, the processes, and other situations relevant to it, then do so. You’ll never know how it can impact an investor’s evaluation of your pitch. Just make sure that it’s true and that you’ve thought about it carefully.
13. Prepare a Succession Plan
In addition to the revenue model, a succession plan is also a requirement starting from the early stage of venture capital investment. A succession plan is an organized documentation of the procedures that the company will take when the current leader steps down and a new one takes over. This gives the investors an idea of how your internal organization works and how well-prepared you are for emergencies and untoward incidents regarding leadership roles.
Assurance. A good succession plan assures them of the security of their investment, that it is not going to be used for playing around in the industry. Moreover, it reflects the company’s confidence in conquering the changing tides of business.
14. Introduce your Management Team
MVPs are often not made by a one-man team. This is why you should, as a good leader, give credit where it’s due and introduce your hardworking team to your audience. Show your investors the faces of the people behind the MVP that has piqued their interests. And if time permits, add an anecdote here and there about each of them for a more intimate touch to the presentation. Sometimes, a touch of personality can pay well in a business pitch.
15. Let them know about your Financials
Finally, be honest about your current financial state and management approaches. You’re asking these people for money and resources, so you’ll have to convince them that you know how to manage money well. A well-documented financial statement suggests that you are a responsible CEO who can be entrusted with seed money.
5 Bonus Tips about Investing & Investors
#1. How do you Pitch an Idea to a company without it being stolen?
Your Minimum Viable Product (MVP) is the intellectual property (IP) of you and your team. To prevent it from being stolen during a business pitch, you can check out the US Patent and Trademark Office to see if your MVP is patentable. If it is, then go ahead and file a provisional patent application to safeguard your IP.
#2. What are the 5 types of Investors for Startups?
There are five types of investors for startups.
- 1) Bank Loans,
- 2) Seed funding from Angel investors,
- 3) Venture Capitalists
- 4) Peer-to-Peer lending
- 5) Personal investors – Family & Friends
#3. Can you get Investors with just an Idea?
Yes, you can get investors with just an idea. They are called Angel investors. These are high net worth individuals who are actively looking for startups and small businesses to provide financial assistance to, in exchange for equity.
#4. How do you legally protect an Idea?
Legal methods to protect an idea include patents, copyrights, trademarks, and trade secrets. For MVPs, patents are commonly used. For more detailed information on how to go about protecting your idea, here’s a step-by-step guide to filing a US patent for your reference.
#5. How do I start a Startup with no Money?
If you don’t have enough money yet to launch a startup, you can try to acquire seed funding from investors. If that isn’t an option, here’s what you can do:
- 1) Brainstorm a business idea with a compelling solution
- 2) Form a team of Advisors – talented individuals with kickass skills
- 3) Build your online presence to promote your MVP
- 4) Collaborate with brands & secure marketing campaigns
- 5) Use value Customer reviews and feedback
- 6) Don’t be complacent, evaluate the competition
- 7) Maximize the use of your tools and challenge their limits
Conclusion
Pitching an idea is no walk in the park for sure. But if you prepare enough and practice diligently, you can expect to get better results than if you are to just aimlessly deliver a presentation to a sea of random investors.
We strongly recommend that you prepare a winning pitch deck presentation with an enthralling delivery to get the upper hand in the event. The rest will be up to your Minimum Viable Product’ – MVP’s capability. If you have resources to spare while you prepare for your pitch, then consider conducting more tests for your MVP to make it even stronger and more ready to conquer the real-world problems you hope to provide solutions to.
Comments: Do you know any other ways to Pitch?
from Hustle Hackers 11/22 enhanced by Peter/CXO Wiz4.biz
For similar Posts, click on Finding Funding.
