VC Minute – quick advice to help startup founders fundraise better
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The first thing I’d do if I were learning to grow my skills at fundraising is to become really excellent at pitching my business in three ways.
The first is the elevator pitch. What’s the sub-one-minute version of your business?
The second is, What’s the story of your business? How did you identify this opportunity? What was the opportunity? Who is going to benefit from this opportunity, and why are you the right person to solve it? Really the hero story of this problem and why you’re going to go solve that problem.
And then the third is to talk about how your business fits into the larger picture of what’s going on in our economic universe. Especially in your early stage, one of the things that I think a lot of businesses miss is: I’ve got this idea for a business. I’ve got a problem I’m going to solve. And then they completely miss the market context that sort of provides the reason for your business to exist.
I have often described it this way. If you’re like a professional surfer, I mean, the best in the world at surfing, you are so awesome at jumping on the board and riding the wave, but if your business doesn’t have any waves to ride, if you as a surfer don’t have any waves to ride, there is no way for anyone to see that you’re a great surfer.
You can be awesome at a business, but if there isn’t a market dynamic that gives you that wave to ride, there’s no business. You’ve got to have not just the business idea in your pitch, but also the market environment that makes it possible for your business to be successful right now. If you’ve got those three things, you’ve got a really great starting point to talk about your business constantly.
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