Are you exploring the funding opportunities for your business? Pitch your unique business idea to investors that will help with secure funding.

Aspire to encourage inner confidence in Venture Capitalists? Want to seize the attention of individuals who can expedite your business by opening their wallets? Willing to convince prospective investors to sign a cheque for your business’s long-term growth potential? All you need is to master the skills to pitch the VCs.

There are also plenty of Venture Capital firms that get funds from the investors and endow those funds in the businesses having more risking factors to support financially.

Steps to Pitch a VC

A mixture of effective metrics, a verified MVP, and a fascinating personality generates a powerful impression among investors. Along with all these, you must have an essential methodology to create an influencing pitch, and here are the steps for that.

1. Metrics/Plans Garnering

Prove a demand for your product (Proof of concept) to VCs. Investors are interested in the products others are willing to use and pay for. Calculate the profitability metrics on market share, market value, and total available market. Analyze processes for scaling if you plan to expand your business on a national level or worldwide. Acknowledge how you will scale when the time comes. Make a strategy to acquire new customers by paid advertising, organic traffic approaches, or cold calling.

2. Discover All That You Require

Consider early valuation of your startup based on Market demand, Revenues, Indicated tractions, and Reputation. You must have enough funds from the investors to grow your business up to a significant level within the next 18 months. Based on that growth, you can boost the further round of investment effectively. But keep in mind higher valuation doesn’t guarantee your success, it is completely dependent on the strategy you have built.

3. Study Your VCs

Do research to choose the Venture Capital Firms or individual VCs that coordinate with your startup objectives. Once you are done with identifying your targeted VCs, start analysis on the firm’s background and growth or individual VC’s LinkedIn profile and history. Gather information about how VCs will acknowledge your industry niche, how big their investment would be, do they invested in successful startups in the past or not. All this information will aid to make a pitch more effective.

4. Get Ready with Your Pitch

Be authentic in front of your investors as most of them are good at reading people’s minds. Prepare a short intro (about 2 minutes) comprising your name, company name with a tagline, and details about your targeted audience, your product/service, and the reason why you will serve your audience. Highlight metrics like sales revenue, potential leads, customers, and partners. Point up how you discover specific needs in the marketplace and the reason why people strongly address those needs.

Next, it’s time to speak up about your story. If you don’t have an effective origin story, create a frictional one to illustrate with photos and videos how your company solves the customer’s problem. Explain how your product will be beneficial to customers rather than its features. Clarify how your product is unique compared to similar products in the market.

Talk about the qualified and enthusiastic team along with educational experience and relevant training. In the end, make a brief pitch summary including the tagline you came up with previously. Be ready to answer the investors’ questions. If you have practiced answering questions properly, there is nothing to worry about.

5. Enhance Your Pitch With Others

Let the people know about your product and its features. If you find someone is not attentive towards your product, find out the reasons behind that ignorance. Later come back with the product/service they are actually eager to use. Surround yourself with others who are known for the process, and then all you need is consistent rehearsals and practice.

Some Pitching Advice Important to Impress VCs

Here are some ways to make a pitching process more productive. Have a look.

Don’t be afraid to talk about your weaknesses. Identify which skills are you lacking as a founder. Ask real questions to the investors about the relationship they want to have with the companies.

Talk about the team. Do not focus only on your own background. It shows you care and respect other people also.

Keep it as short as possible. Display only four points per slide rather than tons of information.

Exude the financial details. Explain why you are scaling up a specified amount and how that amount aids to achieve your business milestones.

At the end of your meeting, investors will ask how they can help you. You can ask for other help like references of companies to convert them into your potential customers.

Try to avoid talking about exit strategies because if you are thinking about it, you are not probably viewing it for the long term.

How can new businesses amaze VCs during virtual pitching?

On Zoom call or any other video calling app, it’s quite complicated to assess an individual’s gesture, you will not know the person is receiving everything in the same manner you want to convey, and whether both the parties are on the same page of subjects and topics or not.

So it is indispensable to communicate about personality and motivation to induce a personal bond with VCs as you are not in the same room. Do not focus only on numbers. It is vital to represent a story straight from the shoulder comprising just a few things: Business purpose, Business operations, and how to achieve goals. VCs are always keen to see proof with essential data and numbers along with enthusiasm behind the unique startup idea.

What are new business ideas VCs desperate to work with?

While getting into the investment for any startup, VCs seek the teams who actually need to solve significant real-life issues leveraging leading-edge technology and want to tackle a large market. VCs, ensure that they help a team that can make their business amendable and productive.

They always want to partner with smart entrepreneurs and aid them to amplify business success by collaboration. VCs appreciate those founders who own up to their deficiencies and comprehend different ways to resolve them. It is a value-adding factor to understand the ability of founders to address the issues rather than the actual solution.

What single typical mistake startups make while pitching?

If startups predict too much about the future, it is also necessary to back them up as VCs are interested to see high revenue growth. That doesn’t mean founders have to be focused only on the numbers because only numbers will not get the ball rolling. They want to acknowledge your plans to address business objectives. They want to know how realistic startups are and whether they are aware of the prospective hazards or not.

Do some basic research about the people you are going to have a conversation with. Check out their corporate profiles, observe whether they have invested in similar companies before just like yours or not.

On the Whole,

You will truly never know how effective your pitch is until you actually experience it in real life. Don’t stress out more. Consider every investor pitch as a learning experience. You will consistently get better by applying those learnings to each of your business areas.

Source: https://vocal.media/01/want-to-pitch-v-cs-to-get-funded-for-your-business