Golden Pitch: How to Build Modern Presentation for Investors

September 2, 2015 | Raj Srivastav

Golden Pitch: How to Build Modern Presentation for Investors
Golden Pitch: How to Build Modern Presentation for Investors

Imagine: you walk into that meeting room, silently rehearsing your pitch over and over again. You’re trying not to be too nervous – you got this; you’ve got a great idea, you’ve made all the right steps, and you’ve got the best team out there.

You walk in front of those investors and start your pitch with…a powerpoint. Something every venture capitalist and angel investor has seen a million times before. Powerpoint presentations are archaic, boring, limited, and don’t do a great job of displaying what you’re really all about. It’s time to build a modern trendy website for a pitch that will capture a VC’s attention. Hire a web designer and get a free quote today for your next big presentation.

Pitch decks designed around a slide presentation are short and to the point, designed to accent your presentation rather than stand on its on. Well-known investor Guy Kawasaki recommends a 10-20-30 rule when it comes to slide presentations: 10 slides, 20 minutes, no less than 30 point font.

Why not offer something new? Instead of a PowerPoint, why not create a limited website, accessible only with a code you provide to investors. Having a custom website will not only impress investors with your tech-savviness, but it will also provide you with a place to express your entire business plan.

A pitch isn’t about selling your company – at least not as much as you’d think. It’s about selling yourself. Slide presentations can be a crutch and aren’t engaging. With a website, an entrepreneur would be free to focus only on speaking, with limited visuals to accent important points. Investors can peruse the full details of your complete business plan at their leisure.

SDI is located in the heart of Silicon Valley, the global hub for angel and VC investment. Our extensive experience in this area has taught us a lot about how this world works, the knowledge we want to pass on to you. These are all elements most entrepreneurs will be familiar with, but remember, this is a website – it should be more detailed than a slide.

Silicon Valley is the heart of venture capitalist investment. In the last year, nearly 80% of all VC investment in the US was in the Bay Area. That’s because California is filled to the brim with innovators, entrepreneurs, and diversity. If you live in the Valley, you breathe and eat the startup mentality.

1. The Executive Summary

An executive summary is the meat and potatoes of your entire pitch. It talks about your idea, your strategies, and your entire overall plan. an executive summary should have:

• The biography. Remember, this is largely about convincing investors that you and your team have the “right stuff” to get the job done. Talk about the experience you have, either in business or in the industry you’re addressing, as well as your team’s experience.

• The problem. Open up to the problem you are trying to solve. Every business venture needs to address some sort of issue, or no one will want to purchase the services or products. Tell the investors the issue you have identified, and then lead to the solution.

• The idea. This is your solution to the above mentioned problem. It could be a website, a custom piece of software, or a mobile app. This is where you present your MVP (Minimum Viable Product) or prototype. You need to show that you not only understand the problem, but you’ve got the right idea to solve it. Keep in mind that mobility is key in today’s world. With Gartner anticipating app revenues to top $77 billion by 2017, investors are going to be all about apps and mobile websites.

• The Market. You need to demonstrate to investors that you’ve studied the market, from target customers to competition. Who would be interested in your idea? How will you market it to them? What is the competition, what do they do well, and how can you improve upon it? Stay positive, investors aren’t interested in how poorly the competition is doing, they want to know how well you will do.

• The Monetizing. Investors are going to want to know if you have a path to monetization from the get-go. You got to show them that they will get a good ROI, or there is no reason for them to give you money.

2. Roadblocks to Competition

This is an important aspect of any business plan that frequently gets forgotten. Most likely, you already face steep competition; if you don’t, then you will soon. The more successful you are, the more people will try to copy you. Show investors that you are building “roadblocks” to slow down competitors.

For app and website development, this can involve building a complicated algorithm that utilizes techniques like machine learning. This makes it extremely difficult for competitors to mimic and can result in pieces of unique code that can be patented – a significant roadblock.

Basically, you want to show investors that somebody else won’t be able to quickly enter the market behind you and steal all of your clientele. This is especially if they can do it cheaper than you. Demonstrate that you’ve already thought about how you’re going to make it expensive and time-consuming to try and copy your model.

3. Break-Even Analysis (BEA)

This a numeric breakdown of all your expenses, from labor to lodging to product development, coupled with your expected revenue. The idea here is to graphically show that you have thought about how much you need to make before your net gains outstrip your net losses. Not only will this show investors that you are really considering what it will take financially, but it will give you an idea as well.

4. Long Term Predictions

Lay out a 3 to 5-year business plan. This means establishing solid goals for your company. For websites and apps, this means establishing how many downloads you need to have at the end of each year, plus how many monthly or daily active users. This creates real-life markers by which you can judge your progress and demonstrates that you are thinking long term.

Get started on your building your million dollar pitch today. Have a one on one discussion with Tech Director, Raj Srivastav either by email or by phone at 408.621.8481 for 20% off.

  • Views7889
  • Views7889

    Recent Blogs

    Let's Discuss

    All information provided by you will be kept 100% confidential.