Build your perfect one minute pitch with Harvard Business School Elevator Pitch Tool - StartupsHK. How to Handle a VC Presentation with No Deck. I recently filmed a show for This Week in Venture Capital in which I talked about how to prepare for a VC meeting: whom you’ll meet, who should attend from your side, what materials you should bring and how you should run the meeting.
I wrote the summary notes in this blog post. That notes only told part of the story. Bijan Sabet – investor & board member in some small companies you might have heard of like Twitter, Tumblr, Boxee & OMGPOP – took issue with the whole notion that you even need a Powerpoint deck anymore. Please read his compelling & short post on the topic. His key quote is, Best Pitch Deck Examples on SlideShare. This Week in Venture Capital - Mark Jeffrey, CEO of ThisWeekIn. How to Pitch A Tech Blogger. I've been asked privately quite a few times over the last couple of years how one should pitch their startup to a tech blog like TechCrunch, GigaOm, VentureBeat or ReadWriteWeb.
So I've decided (quite selfishly) to write a post about the subject instead of repeating myself or re-forwarding emails. This comes from my experience as both a tech writer (for TechCrunch, ~1.5 years) and internet startup entrepreneur (for Plancast, also ~1.5 years), so I've been able to see things from both sides of the table, particularly when it comes to PR for newly founded startups.
As such, these are principles that I primarily recommend to unproven entrepreneurs with unknown companies who want to launch publicly for the first time. Once an entrepreneur or their company gains visibility, their approach to PR will evolve and the press may end up coming to them for news instead of the other way around. It helps to recognize some of the more common types of narratives.
Venture Capitalists Love Sex Because Sex Sells. Mastering PowerPoint isn’t something to be proud of.
But it’s a reality of a startup CEO’s job if you’re trying to raise capital. Why? Because sex sells. Pitching is hard. It’s intimidating, frustrating and stressful. Particletree How We Prepare a Demo. Introduction.
365 days, $10 Million, 3 Rounds, 2 Companies, all with 5 Magic Slides. The results of A/B testing startup pi... by Babak Nivi. Vc presentation. How to work the pitch process (part 1) In my next two articles, I will talk about pitching for investment money.
In this article I will talk about the stages in the pitch process. When pitching to angels through an organized angel group, there is a multi-step process you need to go through. Your end goal is obviously to close a round of financing. However depending on what stage you are at in the process your goals for that step will be different. The best analogy is thinking about the process you go through to apply for a job at a large corporation. 1) Initial application Job search – you see an ad for a job in an on-line job board or in the paper. Angel financing – you fill out the angel group’s 2-3 page application for funding. In either example, your goal is not to get the job or get a cheque. 2) First interview/pitch Job search – you meet with the HR resource who tells you about the company, reviews your work experience, asks questions and answers any questions you have. 3) Final interviews / due diligence. The ABCs of Starting an Investor Pitch Meeting – Always Be Credible.
Malcolm Gladwell made famous the natural human reaction of judging other people in the first few minutes of an encounter with his book, Blink.
Like many other businesspeople, VCs and angel investors (“investors” going forward) blink and judge entrepreneurs very quickly in the first few minutes of an interaction. That’s why the way an entrepreneur starts an investor pitch meeting is a key determinant of their success in that meeting. Those first 10-15 minutes, where the entrepreneur presents themselves before they even present the idea, are very critical in establishing credibility and the right to continue to pitch to an engaged audience. Yet, it is amazing to me how few entrepreneurs start investor meetings crisply and confidently. The formula for the start of the meeting is almost always the same – you are trying to answer the simple question on the mind of the investors: who are you and why are you here? Pitch More Faster Read Versus Listen. As part of our Do More Faster book tour, we’ve been having a pitch session each day called “Pitch More Faster.”
During the hour, we hear four pitches that are five minute each and give direct feedback / suggestions on the pitch itself (not the content or the business, but the pitch.) In my experience, most people suck at the five minute pitch. It’s really hard to do well. There are lots of variants of suckage, including cramming a 30 minute pitch into 5 minutes, doing a 5 minute pitch for the first time (and having no comfort with the material), or talking at 732 word per minute and being impossible to follow. We’ve done Pitch More Faster in about ten cities now and it’s been really interesting. I’ve noticed one consistent thing in virtually every presentation. I learned a long time ago (probably junior high school) that I learn by reading, not by listening.