How to Pitch Investors for Your Start-up ?

Top 10 Tips for Pitching Investors for Your Startup

With the increasing awareness and recognized importance of Startups in India, there have been many provisions made by the Government and Private institutes for facilitating the establishment and affairs of new Startups. However, one of the major problems which are faced by many Startup owners is the arrangement of the Capital.

Every Start-up needs funds that would be used on various aspects from incorporation to marketing of the product or brand. Start-up Founders usually rely on the notion of acquiring funds from the investors, but pitching investors for your start-up is a tough phase to go through.

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Logically, your investors would not be convinced with a normal pitch or presentation of your Startup, you would have to go through enough preparation, analysis, research, and so on for getting their attention. Investors have many Startup founders approaching them and pitching about their own venture, roughly an investor may go across more than hundreds of pitches in a while, you need to make sure that your Pitch or presentation stays above all of them for getting them to consider your venture. Below are a few of the tips for pitching investors.

1. The 10 Minute Rule

It probably took you more than years of time, money, and efforts for drawing out your Startup and the business plan, however, the world works fast and anything more than 10 minutes of presentation may decrease your chances to have your idea picked up by the investors. They keep hearing many pitches and hence a long pitch that would exceed more than 10 minutes might take away their interest. You need to precise, cover all the significant points, and prepare your presentation with a time limit of not more than 10 minutes. 10 minutes is all you have to showcase yourself.

2. Practice

Sometimes an individual who plans to pitch the investors in the coming time is so focused and involved in making the presentation strong and better that he or she neglects the exercise of practicing their pitch to themselves or in front of suitable people. You need to practice your pitch regularly, check the precise time that you are taking for presenting your pitch, and then face the showdown.

3. Narrate your Pitch as a Story

Storytelling is the art of catching everyone’s attention. An investor may forget the values and numbers that a pitch was claiming to bring them, but nobody can ever forget a good story. A good story would always remain remembered at the back of someone’s mind and can help you to Standout from the other individuals who gave their pitch. It also becomes easy for Investors to follow-up on your pitch at a later hour or day and remember all the details very well.

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4. Create a Problem and a Solution

They already know how the market works; they would also have an estimated idea of how well the industry in which your Startup lies is performing. You need to come up by offering the various problems that are faced by the customers or that would be faced by your Startup during its initial stages. Once you have made your problems known publicly, you are indirectly clearing their doubts about the same by offering a good solution for those particular problems. The investors probably already know about the common problems, what they want to hear is an expert solution for the same.

5. Why does it Standout?

Investors have probably heard many pitches that are similar to your business idea, product, or industry. You need to outline about why your Business Idea or products stand from the others in the market. They would want to know the uniqueness about your idea or product that would gain them the profits that they expect. By highlighting about the uniqueness of your Startup, you are going on the right track of convincing them.

6. Your Target Audience and Strategy of Acquiring them

Every business has its own target audience, and having the target audience known is one of the important elements of a Successful Pitch. You need to clearly specify the reach of your market, the various types of consumers that it can attract. Other than specifying your target audience you also need to talk about various strategies that you have in your mind for acquiring them. You do not have to elaborate about your strategy, just a small conclusion of the same would be enough to prove your point.

7. Revenue Model

One of the important elements from an investor’s side is to know your revenue model, or basically how your business will earn money? You have to focus most of your attention on choosing the right words that would describe your revenue model at its best. Be precise about how your Startup would implement the selected Revenue model to its best and earn profits for you and the investors.

8. Your Inner Circle

By inner-circle it means the team that you have for your Startup. Investors would probably like to know what types of skills does your team member have and what skills are missing in your team currently. Since a Start-up’s future is based on the team that handles it, this point is also important.

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9. Prepare your Answers Beforehand

There are going to be a few questions that would be asked by an Investor if he/she is interested in your project. Hence you should prepare yourself beforehand by anticipating a few important questions and practice your answers.

10. Your Projections

Clearly, investors are interested in knowing when would they get their profits? You can share your projections about the revenue that your business would generate and show the numbers and amount of time in which they would earn profit. However, make sure that these claims are backed with rock-solid explanations.

Conclusion

Preparing a Rock-solid and successful pitch for Investors is a difficult task. The top 10 tips for pitching investors are the 10-minute rule, Practicing, narrating a Story, finding a Problem & Solution, Uniqueness, Target Audience & Strategies, Revenue Model, your team, preparing beforehand, and sharing your Projections.

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