Pitch perfect — the art of pitching to investors
For many founders trying to raise capital, just getting in the same room as a venture capitalist is an achievement! It’s that time where founders want to shoot their shot. Naturally, when we want something really badly, it’s easy to overthink the process and put undue pressure on ourselves.
Venture capitalists, Yvonne Bajela — Investor at Impact X and Yana Abramova — Investor at Pretiosum graced our Instragram Lives delivering ‘tips on how to successfully pitch to venture capitalists’. As you can imagine, these investors have been incessantly pitched to over the years and they can spot a good pitch when they see and hear one! This a high level recap on things discussed and some golden nuggets to remember when preparing for your big investor pitch day.
Storytelling
There’s definitely an art to storytelling and…practice makes perfect. It’s a fine balance across so many things which can quickly become exhausting when trying to perfect a great deck. Whenever I start writing a deck my old English Literature’s teachers Canadian voice creeps in ‘be concise’! Some gems shared by Yvonne Bajela and Yana Abramova were:
- Keep it simple
- Remove technical jargon
- Focus on the problem your startup solves and the solution it provides
- Highlight your competitors and other key players in your market
- Focus on your points of differentiation e.g. — your technology, product, business model and price
- Show your passion
- If you’re going to use a demo, steer away from live demos to prevent technical issues on the day and use a pre-recorded demo
My two pence, from working on pre-accelerators and accelerators I think compelling storytelling is when anyone can understand your pitch and the value your startup provides.
Scalability
VCs are interested in a startups scalability, it’s a clear indication on how they’ll make a healthy return on their investment. You need to show how you plan to scale, which essentially means how you plan to grow your business. Investors typically want to see a 10 plus times return so don’t neglect this part of your pitch. Yvonne…
