Don't make them wonder whether you've even started
(Just a short quick post on pitching tactics.)
One of the best ways to sabotage your pitch is to bury any evidence or measurement of progress at the very back of the presentation.
I think I understand the impulse… it has something to do with scene-setting, elaborate world-building (“let me tell you about a broken process as it exists today”), crescendoing towards the big reveal at the climax of the pitch ("ta-da!"). To the presenter, this buildup of tension feels very psychologically satisfying; it's fun to story-tell. It's also very common in an era of "Problem:Solution" fundraising templates which encourage founders to give a lengthy exposition that fully establishes a hairy problem in need of a solution.
But this is bad, very bad, and let me tell you why.
Here’s something that you may not know about venture investors: Sometimes, we get stuck in hour-long meetings where founders meander through 40-slide mega-decks, educating us on all manner of things that we’ve never encountered before (“here’s how veterinary billing works…”), which all lead up to the very final slide which is some form of “and here’s why we need $500k from you to get started”. Also known as: Something that would have been very crucial to know at the start of the meeting. (And, depending on the investor's stage focus, potentially a reason to not have held that meeting in the first place).
This of course rarely happens, and if you're reading this you probably know enough to avoid this. But the real problem for the average founder is: Because all VCs have occasionally been in this situation with other entrepreneurs, they’ve developed a little timer in their brains that goes off 5 or 10 minutes into a pitch in the absence of any direct evidence of progress, where they begin to wonder…. “Hmm, I really hope they're not going to tell me they haven't done any work yet.” You really don’t want your potential investors spending meeting time disengaged from your pitch, silently wondering if you’re a time-wasting wannabe. Especially if you’re not a time-wasting wannabe.
So: don’t make them wonder:
If you’ve launched and have some traction or revenue, put this on the first body slide of your deck and mention it in your blurb. Don’t make them wonder if you’ve launched.
If you haven’t launched but have some other evidence of future traction (LOIs, downloads, list of clients who want a free trial, survey results, etc), show it off early and often. Don’t make them wonder if anybody wants this product.
If you don’t have those things but you are hard at work on the product, always show actual product (screenshots, photos, etc) to the extent you are able. Don’t make them wonder if you’ve built anything yet.
If you haven’t launched and you also haven’t built any product yet (i.e. company is just in concept stage and nobody has quit their jobs yet), triple-check that you are speaking with the type of investors who are open to investing in companies at this stage. (Or alternately, conduct your outreach on an explicitly informational or feedback-driven basis). Don’t make them wonder if the meeting should be happening at all.
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