Share This Post

Startup

If you had only 1 minute and 1 slide to describe your startup to investors, what would you do?

(This was my answer to a question on Quora)

communicate

I would use three lines on that slide:

  • Explain the concept in 1 line
  • Introduce the team behind it (that’s the key reason for them to consider investing in it)
  • Tell them how much money you need and what you will do with it

Example (portal name is real… numbers are for illustration purpose only)

  • Tune Patrol is an online platform for independent bands to upload, share and sell their music to a community of music lovers – Tune Patrol 
  • The team is a great mix of established musicians, music industry professionals, experienced entrepreneurs and professionals
  • We are raising USD 500,000 – this will last us 18 months and will help us get to 1 million users and 500+ bands across India

Why do I suggest you cover the three points mentioned above

  • Concept: Because if you describe your business well, most smart investors will be able to make a quick assessment of the size of the market potential, the opportunity (e.g. competitive environment, need gaps, etc.) and the dynamics of the business case (e.g. can we make money, is there an exit, etc.)
  • Team: Because if the answers to the above question are positive, then the quality of the team is the one key thing that the investors are going to bet on. If the team is not strong, passionate, practical, aspirational, aggressive, etc. then no amount of market potential or strong business case will convince investors to invest
  • The ask: Because they need to know what you are asking for and and where it will take you

Comments

Share This Post

8 Comments

  1. Thanks Prajakt,

    I wait for your posts as each one of them has some learning take away for me.

    Regards

    Mahesh Nair

    http://www.bookmytrainers.com

  2. Thank you Mahesh.

  3. I’d add momentum/traction too.

  4. Prajakt Sir,

    An awesome Diwali treat 🙂 

    Happy Diwali Sir 

  5. Great 3 points. Should keep it 3 only, 4th is hard to remember. These 3 points should make the investor sit up and ask … what is your traction, what is your 12 month target.

  6. Thank you everyone.. Karan, Sandeep and Darshan

  7. Great post Prajakt.

    It reminded me of an answer by Jimmy Wales I had read long ago. I searched it for few minutes now and glad to have found it again 🙂 Here the link to original answer. https://qr.ae/4V9jB

    Question : What are the things we can do to get Jimmy Wales to talk to us and work on a startup with us if we have awesome startup ideas?

    Answer:

    Send me an email. Before you send it, look it over a few times and delete all the hype. Just tell me three things 

    First, in a matter of fact way tell me what it is you are doing.  I don’t want to hear any buzzwords, just an explanation. “A world changing next generation platform for GenZ blah blah blah” – yuck. “We’re making an app for ordering pizza. It’s better than all the other apps out there because it’s like Kayak – it meta-searches all the local pizza places near you to give you a list of prices for the options you’ve selected” – yay.

    Second, tell me how you think I can help. “Your vision with Wikipedia inspired us to contact you and we’d love to work with you” – doesn’t tell me what you want from me – yuck. “We’d love to bring you on as a board member. We have an angel investor lined up, but she feels we need someone experienced in consumer internet on our board. Also, we need introductions to venture capitalists and we’ve targeted 10  major pizza chains who we’d like to work with and we think you could help us get meetings at a higher level in those organizations.” – yay, maybe I can help with that.

    Third, tell me how it benefits me. I’m very very active in my charity work, but your startup is not a charity. (If it is, then omit this last one… but I’m already advising too many so I probably can’t take on more right now!) 🙂  “We thought you’d enjoy meeting young entrepreneurs” – bzzzzt. I DO enjoy meeting young entrepreneurs, I do it all the time as a matter of routine at conferences and through friends and so on. But if you’d like more than a friendly pat on the back and encouragement, then treat me like a businessperson – let’s find something that’s mutually agreeable. “If you could join us as an advisor, we’d be able to compensate you with stock options in a quantity appropriate to our stage of development.” – yay.

Comments are now closed for this post.

Lost Password

Register