No worries. This is not yet another wannabe expert telling the startup world how to craft your pitch when you go for funding. A veritable horde of VCs, angels, consultants, B-school profs, and a few entrepreneurs (not too many of those though) have taken on the burden of coaching you on just that. Many are useful, and I must admit it is kind of fun to see the different approaches (try these two for a poles-apart stance: the third 'do' in Tips for Presenting to Angel Investors and Guy Kawasaki's creed on The 10/20/30 Rule).
What no one comes right out and says is: the more you have to say, the easier it is to say it - even if it is boiled down to 10 slides of 3 bullets each. In other words, the more you have accomplished in building your startup, the less you have to worry about what to say and can fiddle instead with fonts, colors, syntax and such happy stuff. But this becomes a bit of a catch-22 if you're in the seed stage and looking for funds.
Conventional wisdom holds (does so with super-glue effect) that investors fund based on the team, the potential market and the technology - at any stage, just expecting more at each. It is tempting to think that just because the guy/gal across the table is spitting enthused about your idea they'd want to do something to make it happen. Not so. Investors are in the business of investing, which means they want big returns with little risk. And ideas, however compelling, don't turn themselves into booming businesses. So every aspect - team, technology, market - has to convey reduced risk and proven potential (which sounds like an oxymoron, but if you're familiar with a pitch, you'd know what I mean).
But a seed stage company is by definition just a notch beyond an idea. If you can moonlight or bootstrap for many months, you can build a working version of the product, get customers using it, scope out the market and get to the point you have something solid to pitch. (Of course, if you can fund it yourself, you're not obsessing about seed stage funds are you?) But what if that's not feasible? If you have a proven team with a stellar track record in startups (which means you could probably fund it yourself, but choose not to do it all yourself), investors could be sold on your spiel even if there's nothing you can show them. If you're not proven, but are a band of engineers from a top university who've worked on a project you want to commercialize - you're in too, heck, you're probably batting away the term sheets.
Does this mean that entrepreneurs who don't fit the slam-dunk mold for funding should give up on their ideas? Of course not. Real entrepreneurs don't do that. They don't let articles on how to do presentations take away their confidence because they don't have a 'strong story'. They continue building their startups and go for funding when it seems necessary. What they do is get creative. They figure out how they can show reduced risk and proven potential with what they have. They lead with their strengths and they lead with passion and determination. And all that can build one heckuva punchy PowerPoint.
Channeling the inner entrepreneur who views life as a startup. Musings about people, their spirit, the startup ethos and the entrepreneurial attitude, with an emphasis on education and social ventures. The 'how-to'? Not so much. But definitely the why, the what and the whatever.
Sticking with it
Last week I attended the Global IIT conference in Santa Clara. Jeff Immelt of GE was one of the keynote speakers. His was an interesting speech. It was not a rah-rah, high-energy, evangelizing one, but a comfortable 'this is what I think about' kind, where he didn't seem to mind taking a controversial position now and then. He touched on a variety of different points, globalization (good but only if it is win-win), energy (nuclear is not all bad) etc. He also talked about what new grads should look for in a job and asserted that building something is the most satisfying aspect of business. His advice was whether you were in a big company or a startup, you should stick with it for a few years and take part in building it.
This definitely resonated with me. Especially in startups, it is all about building - the product, the market, the team, the company itself. It is hard work though, and to add to the challenge, there is a generous dash of risk and uncertainty about everything in a startup. While it is very exciting, it has all the appeal of teetering on the edge of a cliff in a strong wind - never mind the amazing view. I recently ran across a couple of very competent, successful corporate managers who couldn't understand why anyone would want to work in a startup if you had to make do without admin help. Even the promise of a big monetary payoff doesn't seem worth the effort.
But for some, especially those with the entrepreneurial bent, building something delivers a huge rush. It's what rolls you off the bed at 6:00am for a conference call when you've been up until 3:00 getting ready for a demo. It's the excitement of the first splash page, the first non-founder employee, the first office address (which is not your home), the first user trial - every little milestone that proves that the company is becoming more real and is moving ahead and you're stepping back just a bit from the cliff's edge.
Immelt also talked about what it would take for new ideas to win, that's for the next post. Building takes commitment, and the satisfaction of building a company is one thing that every startup entrepreneur has in common with the CEO of GE - it's nice to be reminded of these self-evident truths once in a while.
This definitely resonated with me. Especially in startups, it is all about building - the product, the market, the team, the company itself. It is hard work though, and to add to the challenge, there is a generous dash of risk and uncertainty about everything in a startup. While it is very exciting, it has all the appeal of teetering on the edge of a cliff in a strong wind - never mind the amazing view. I recently ran across a couple of very competent, successful corporate managers who couldn't understand why anyone would want to work in a startup if you had to make do without admin help. Even the promise of a big monetary payoff doesn't seem worth the effort.
But for some, especially those with the entrepreneurial bent, building something delivers a huge rush. It's what rolls you off the bed at 6:00am for a conference call when you've been up until 3:00 getting ready for a demo. It's the excitement of the first splash page, the first non-founder employee, the first office address (which is not your home), the first user trial - every little milestone that proves that the company is becoming more real and is moving ahead and you're stepping back just a bit from the cliff's edge.
Immelt also talked about what it would take for new ideas to win, that's for the next post. Building takes commitment, and the satisfaction of building a company is one thing that every startup entrepreneur has in common with the CEO of GE - it's nice to be reminded of these self-evident truths once in a while.
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