VC Minute – quick advice to help startup founders fundraise better.
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Something that founders underestimate is that your entire pitch should be a storyline so that it’s not hard to follow along.
If youre trying to talk about your business and even yourself, and you’re jumping all over the place and they’re mentally trying to piece together and connect the dots and what you’re saying and to follow along in the journey of the business and where you are, they’re gonna check out.
If you can’t make a clear path for them to follow along, they’re absolutely gonna lose interest.
We always say that lead with your story. An investor and your audience buys into you before what you do. When you’re leading with that story, it also builds credibility and showcases what qualifications do you have? Why are you the team qualified to take this business to the next level?
When sharing your story, there’s probably a lot of elements on your founder’s journey that you want to share, but it shouldn’t take five minutes for you to get out your story, problem, solution.
You have to think about which parts are relevant to the audience, and which parts of my background are relevant to the problem and solution that I have at hand.
For example, we’re working with a founder who was brewing coffee mixed with beer, and all she did was talk about her aunt’s love of coffee. That was her storyline, but it didn’t give her credibility, it showcased her passion. But when we dug a little deeper, we found that she was actually one of the first African American brewmasters of beer in her state. We tied that in with her brewing coffee as being the level of qualification and importance.
A few questions that we ask founders when trying to build out their story is, what motivated you? What inspired you, or what makes you qualified to solve the problem? You can think about those in three buckets.
If you can paint a personal picture and then back it up with facts and statistics to showcase that this is a problem we’re solving, then you’re on the right track.
When you bring in an emotional connection to the origin of the business, that showcases to the investor that you’re that much more motivated to solve the problem and you’re not, doing this for a quick buck or a quick exit. You’re way better off showing an emotional connection and your passion for the business in order to move along in their process and remain memorable on top of mind to an investor.
About Power To Pitch
Power To Pitch offers a virtual Course & Community, to help pre-seed to seed stage founders go from confused & frustrated about pitching to confident & prepared so they can concisely talk about what they do in order to take advantage of funding opportunities. We help founders create a winning pitch, deck, and fundraising strategy and directly match them with investors in their industry. Apply here: https://www.powertopitch.com/apply
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