In today’s world, everyone believes they have a startup worth funding. This isn’t always true (obviously) and investors are left with the daunting task of having to sift through the myriad pitches and select what they believe could be the next big thing.
If you’re looking to pitch, the above creates a number of issues; the biggest one being the very limited amount of time available for pitching, typically, 3 minutes (5 if you’re lucky).
Over the years, many writers have converged on the 10 slides you need for a pitch, but today, I present a rather radical approach; not to disregard the 10-slide rule, of course! This approach doesn’t seek to replace the 10-slide rule, but rather to enhance it.
Here’s how to pitch:
The ability to connect with your audience is key for a successful and memorable pitch. I have highlighted a few ways to do this:
- Confidence is key
Keep in mind that confidence dictates the tone of your voice and how engaging you come off. If you come off as timid, many investors will translate this into diminished capacity to run an enterprise. Practicing your pitch with friends and family numerous times before the pitch will go a long way towards making you feel more confident about the gospel you’re preaching.
- Humanise your pitch
When trying to use the 10-slide approach, many people tend to create incoherent pitches without “natural” transitions between slides. It is important to always remind yourself that the people before you are exactly that, people. They have emotions and are susceptible to a good story; focus your energy on taking them on a journey from the inception of your idea through to your vision for what the future holds.
- The problem? Target market? Value Proposition? Scaling?
Be sure to articulate the problem and make the audience understand the pain point for the target market, even if they themselves are not potential users. Be sure to help them visualise who your target is and just how many people would want/need your product.
Precisely state what value your product has to offer the customers, explain this as vividly as you can — even if your value proposition is a feeling e.g. a new line of luxury watches could have its value proposition as a feeling of exclusivity. Make sure the audience understands what you’re selling.
When your audience understands the problem you’re solving, and for whom, explain to them how you envision your startup scaling. It’s important that you use financial projections to help the audience visualise your potential scaling capabilities.
- Do your due diligence
Before you walk into a room full of potential investors, be sure that you have done all the research that has any significance to your pitch. Most importantly, find out as much about the competition as you can. You will have to answer questions about the competition so pretending the competition doesn’t exist is an unwise move. Investors are looking for bold people who like to identify their challenges and face them head-on.
- Build the right team
Investors invest in the team and not really the idea because they need to know that the team you’ve built around the idea has the capacity to execute the idea in a profitable way. I have written an article about building a winning team, perhaps you could get a few pointers.
- Create a stunning presentation
During your pitch, the investors listen to you and watch your presentation simultaneously, which makes both aspects equally important.
Spend some time to use presentation software to create neat graphics and slides. There are multiple packages you can use to create your presentation e.g. Microsoft Powerpoint, Keynote for Mac users and Prezi which is an online tool with amazing transitions. My personal favourite is Canva which is a web app with multiple templates and gives you the ability to create and download beautiful graphics.
Ultimately, always remember that a pitch is a human interaction and focusing on the social aspects of a pitch will help to make you more memorable.
However, the social aspects should be the icing on the cake, after you’ve added all the core facts, research, statistics and financial estimates to your pitch.
Good luck with your next pitch!
This post was originally published on Medium.
Follow Edmond on Twitter @EdmondAtto to keep updated on any new posts.