The N commandments of pitching to VC’s

by betafoundry on Aug 19, 2011 - No Comments

The best place to get advice about pitching is from the sort of people you might be pitching to. When we met with investment managers from MMC, the Betafoundry teams practiced their pitches and got some great feedback.

Thou shalt Thou shalt not
  • Start with the most impressive thing about your business, whether it’s traction, the team, or the uniqueness of the product.
  • Know you’re audience and tailor your pitch to them, this includes knowing how long you have to work with
  • Good idea to start with asking about who you’re pitching to – ask about the company, or the investors they represent, this can help with the above.
  • Give a clear picture of what the business does very early on
  • Ask for next steps
  • Be passionate
  • Show the stage of the company
  • Show data – but make sure it’s solid (the phrase “data is porn” was used, but we won’t attribute it… let’s just say agree can be exciting to investors).
  • Come up with an excuse to contact them later – for example email through your pitch deck, or follow up on some questions you were asked
  • Ask for next steps
  • Get defensive, if there’s danger of getting into an argument say you’d like to give the point more thought. Otherwise you lose valuable time and you may make a bad impression. You could follow up by email when you’ve had more time to think and reflect o the contentious point.
  • Talk over one another
  • BS
  • Shy away from weaknesses
  • Be ridiculous
  • Change your personality [if you're a ridiculous person… you're in trouble]
  • Show dubious or inconistent data
  • Use out of date pitch slides – make sure your data (eg on traction) is up to date
  • Feel you have to go through all your slides, particularly if you’ve already talked over a point as a result of a question

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