What Do VCs Want to See in a Pitch? (aka Why You Can’t Win)

11.17.11 by Dov

Saw this recent post for entrepreneurs figuring out how to pitch VCs and thought I’d add my two cents.

Personally, I prefer to walk through a description of a new venture in the following order:

1. What do you do?  I know lots of people want to start with how big the market is and what the problem they’re solving is, but I find that it all makes more sense if I have the initial context of what we’re talking about. Not necessarily a demo (yet), but just enough context to know what the product/service does.

2. The pain.  Here’s your chance to explain why the world sucks without your solution (apologies to Kelly Clarkson; now apologies for mentioning Kelly Clarkson).  Tell me how you make customers’ lives better and then how many customers care (i.e. market size).

3. Why will you win? And please – not one of those charts showing how you have checkmarks on a bunch of features that your competitors don’t, unless you’re going to show every feature (not advised) or just the ones that make a substantial difference to the customer (which off the top of my head, means no more than 3).

4. The team (i.e. Why will you win – Part 2).

5. Financials and details on the capital raise (i.e. how much and for what?)

6. Sometimes a demo helps, but sometimes it just highlights how in love with the technology you are (that’s bad, by the way).  It’s your call.

By the way, the pitch doesn’t need to be (or perhaps even SHOULDN’T be) a Powerpoint deck that we’re going to walk through.  Guy Kawasaki has his 10/20/30 rule (10 slides, 20 minutes, 30 point font), but frankly if everything is in 30 points or larger, my take is what’s the point of even putting that little information down on a slide?  Just say it, and save the slides for charts, demos, financial projections, or other visuals you can’t communicate verbally.

Finally – you need to realize that everyone you talk to is going to have their own preferred approach (as evidenced by the disparity of opinion in that original post, plus my comments, plus whatever you find in the 2.5 million results if you Google “venture capital pitch”), so you can’t really win.

At the end of the day, I’d advise just doing whatever’s comfortable for you.  If you understand your business and are a reasonably talented communicator, any VC with any idea of what they’re doing should be able to understand the concept after a meeting, regardless of the length, order, color, or font size of your pitch deck coming in.

 Subscribe in a reader

Tags: pitch
Posted in Entrepreneurs, Fundraising, Venture Capital Industry | Leave a comment