Pitching to Angels/VCs (continued)
Check out Secrets of Angel Investing
Also, I attended a few talks/presentations (including one by David Rose of Rose Tech Ventures, NYC) on how to pitch to VCs, what VCs look for, and so on. The following is a collection of some of my notes from these talks:
Qualities/Things Angels/VCs look for (most of this is from David Rose’s talk at CBS):
- Integrity (Most important of all)
- Passion
- Experience & Knowledge (Deep domain knowledge)
- As David Rose said “I would rather invest in an entrepreneur who has failed, rather than one, who has never tried before”
- Sales, Finance and Product Management Skills
- Leadership
- Commitment (”Bad things happen to all businesses!”)
- Vision (Rarely do VCs/Angels invest in “me-too” businesses)
- Realism/Pragmatism (Don’t try to solve problems, you possibly can’t!)
- Coachability
Presentation Guidelines (Influenced by David Rose’s talk at CBS and emails on NextNY):
- Start with a story/something dramatic, an anecdote
- Always lay the groundwork first (don’t assume that the audience know everything — don’t assume anything!)
- Specifically mention the things you know and understand and things you do not
- Do not lie. Don’t be dogmatic!
- Absolutely no typos, errors, and internal inconsistencies
- Keep it short.
- Good Presentation: Short, Short bullet points
- Better Presentation: Just the headlines on the slides
- Best Presentation: Just images on the slides (and you tell a story through it)
- Tell a story
- Rehearse, Rehearse
- Anticipate the questions (Be allocentric — think about the questions you would ask if you had to invest your 401K money in the startup!)
What do VCs look for:
Tags: Venturing