{"id":47819,"date":"2023-10-20T15:55:20","date_gmt":"2023-10-20T15:55:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/startupsmart.test\/2023\/10\/20\/investors-fund-people-not-pitch-decks-heres-whats-actually-important-in-your-startup-pitch-startupsmart\/"},"modified":"2023-10-20T15:55:20","modified_gmt":"2023-10-20T15:55:20","slug":"investors-fund-people-not-pitch-decks-heres-whats-actually-important-in-your-startup-pitch-startupsmart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/uncategorized\/investors-fund-people-not-pitch-decks-heres-whats-actually-important-in-your-startup-pitch-startupsmart\/","title":{"rendered":"Investors fund people, not pitch decks: Here’s what’s actually important in your startup pitch – StartupSmart"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Pitch\"<\/div>\n
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Bluechilli’s Alan Jones tweeted recently about startup founders sending him Prezi pitch decks that he couldn\u2019t open on his phone.<\/p>\n

The message was pretty simple: Don\u2019t do that shit.<\/p>\n

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Founders, please: don't send investors your pitch deck in Prezi. Requires Flash, which iOS and OSX don't like.<\/p>\n

— alan jones (@bigyahu) April 7, 2016<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I can understand Alan\u2019s irritation. Those founders aren\u2019t considering what he needs. They\u2019re just looking for something that\u2019s going to impress.<\/p>\n

At its most innocent, that looks naive or thoughtless. On the other end of the spectrum, it looks like their priority is trying to wow rather than be straight-forward, like they\u2019re almost missing the point of pitching.<\/p>\n

I can\u2019t take a startup seriously when they have an approach to investment that is focused on style over substance. I can\u2019t take a founder seriously when their goal is to impress people rather than inform them.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s not kid ourselves. If your company is solid, your ideas good enough and the information in your pitch deck is complete and thorough, nobody will notice how pretty it looks. If you\u2019re a pitching a bad idea, there is no design in the world that can save you.<\/p>\n

In either scenario, an investor won\u2019t give a damn about the way it looks.<\/p>\n

The founders sending Prezi decks are making a key mistake, in trying to impress with their presentation, rather than with the information inside it.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not just about pitch deck design. The same applies for any approach to pitching that emphasises hype or style or a cool factor over information.<\/p>\n

After all, that\u2019s what seeking funding is about. You\u2019re trying to educate people about the clear, bullshit free reasons that your company is a good investment. You want to provide them with the facts, the data, the (legitimate) numbers, the background and the research that will demonstrate a potential return on their investment.<\/p>\n

Recently, the investors I\u2019ve spoken to have had the same story to tell. They see founder after founder try to impress them with a big presentation, a big song and dance, a lot of buzzwords and very little substance.<\/p>\n

I got a beer with a VC the other night who said he\u2019s had to stop founders half way through a presentation to ask for a clear, simple explanation of what they\u2019re actually doing\u200a\u2014\u200aand many of them can\u2019t provide one. They stumble over that most basic element, the part that should have been defined long before they went hunting for money.<\/p>\n

If you want someone to invest in your company, you need to realize they are looking at five different factors:<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/section>\n

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  • You and your team\u200a\u2014\u200ayour experience, knowledge, dedication and vision;<\/li>\n
  • The product, and its quality;<\/li>\n
  • The target market and audience;<\/li>\n
  • The numbers around pricing, marketing, development, infrastructure and growth;<\/li>\n
  • Your roadmap to scaling the company.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

    When a reputable VC firm makes a decision about whether or not to invest in a startup it is always going to be based on those factors. It\u2019s not going to have anything to do with buzzwords and hype or with a flashy presentation. They want to be able to go through the deck, read the information, gain the necessary knowledge and then act on it.<\/p>\n

    Nobody wants to see your own inflated numbers telling them how much your company will be worth. Believe it, they\u2019re going to make their own valuation, and it\u2019ll be a damn sight more accurate.<\/p>\n

    If you go in spraying numbers you\u2019ve made up based on five minutes of browsing Mattermark looking for your competitors, it\u2019s going to show.<\/p>\n

    Nobody wants to play buzzword bingo, and they won\u2019t give a shit about how many times you can say VR, IoT, AR, bot, chat or disruption in one sentence.<\/p>\n

    They\u2019ll be looking beyond anything like that to try and discern the facts.<\/p>\n

    If you\u2019ve found a VC who\u2019s impressed by buzzwords, flash and inflated projections, you don\u2019t want to work with them anyway. They will not provide you with the insight, support or long term care that a growing startup needs.<\/p>\n

    You could go into a pitch with pyrotechnics, a choreographed dance number, a keynote speech from Sir Paul McCartney and an audio-visual virtual reality presentation experience, but without substance and real information, you\u2019ll be like that one drunk friend from college who thought the graduate mixer was a costume party and turned up dressed as Elvis – flashy, embarrassing and inappropriate.<\/p>\n

    Investors fund people and products, not pitch decks.<\/p>\n

    This article was first published on Medium.<\/em><\/p>\n

    Follow StartupSmart on<\/em> Facebook,<\/em> Twitter,<\/em>LinkedIn <\/em>and <\/em>SoundCloud.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Bluechilli’s Alan Jones tweeted recently about startup founders sending him Prezi pitch decks that he couldn\u2019t open on his phone. The<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":58334,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,9,17,1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47819"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47819"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47819\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/58334"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47819"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47819"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47819"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}