5 Things Investors Need to Know in the First Moment You Meet Them
Get ready for presenting to investors. Get ready for Venture Madness. For this opportunity, the elevator pitch is a key to introducing your company and grabbingattention at the start.
Dave Bittner, CEO at Beanstalk CFO Group, suggests two sentences to your elevator pitch. Investors need to know how to compare you to other startups they work with and other companies in the marketplace. Your elevator pitch places you in their mind. This is the set up and it is an opportunity to position your startup for play.
With these two sentences, you provide investors with the critical outline of your business.
Sentence 1: We sell _____ (product or service deliverable) to _____ (target market) who want _____ (benefit).
Sentence 2: Unlike _____ (competitor), we _____ (differentiation) .
So let’s look at the five things presented here.
Product/Service — This is simply your offer—the thing you are selling. What is the thing that appears on the invoice? What is the nut that you deliver?
Target Market — Remember, your target market is not everybody. Everybody doesn’t want what you are offering, you don’t have resources to attract everybody, and investors will lose interest if you are not focused. What is your headpin?
In Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey Moore, he refers to marketing like bowling. Hit the Headpin. When you are bowling, you don’t lob the ball into the pins, you roll it into the headpin — the beachhead segment of the market. You hit it based on your ability to hit it, and it’s proximity to other pins. Let it knock down the other pins that knock down other. A domino effect.
Benefit — You may have hundreds of benefits. Pick one, the primary benefit.
Competition or Comparison Others — Do not say you have no competition. How attractive can this market be if no one is doing something in it? do the research and stretch to cite competition or substitute for your offer). Unlike the way it has been done before, we do something interesting. Unlike it has never been done before?
Differentiation — What do you do better?
Show your elevator pitch, and include your mission, tagline,brand promise or slogan as a signature to your presentation slides. You don’t speak everything you have on your slide. Supplement information so it works together — spoken presentation and written form.
Catch more via the Get Ready Seminar on YouTube . And, save the dates: Venture Madness 2017 — March 8-10, 2017 in Scottsdale, AZ at Hotel Valley Ho.
Beanstalk CFO Group is a proud sponsor of Invest Southwest
Invest Southwest is a non-profit dedicated to educating and mentoring Arizona’s early-stage firms and connecting them with serious investors from around the region to help fuel scale and growth.
