how to make a perfect pitch

7/29/2019 HOW TO make a perfect pitch

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(c) startupolic 2013 1

HOW TO make a perfect pitchWhy are you constantly pitching as an entrepreneur? For those who

discover the termpitching right now, this word is used to name the actionof presenting your project/company efficiently.

There are basically 2 types of pitches (consciously neglecting the sales

pitch, which is a bit different):

the high concept pitch, which allows you to present what you do in30 seconds and 1 or 2 sentences. This pitch is also called elevator

pitch, because if you meet Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Page or David

Marcus (founder of Zong, from Switzerland and who sold his

company to PayPal and recently became president of its board!) inan elevator, youd better be efficient to tell him quickly what you

do otherwise youll have missed the opportunity! Moreover, a well

thought elevator pitch is a MUST HAVE for anyone, as it shows how

you can explain your business opportunity to everyone, despite its

high technological complexity.

the investor pitch is when you have the opportunity to present yourstartup to one or more investors. In this case, you have a bit more

time but you also should go straight to the point, because time is

scarce for everyone (and investors, as any common human being,hate losing time). Your audience is there to listen your pitch, but

also other ones. So youd better be well prepared to stand out of the

crowd!

Ill focus more on the second one here, as presenting to investors is one

of the key skills youll need as a high-tech founder of a promising startup.

The only goal you should have for doing a pitch (forget ego, that is, to be

the center of attention its not Facebook here!) is always to reach the

next step. Which can be to send your complete Business Plan to investorsor just to set a meeting. When youre pitching to students, the goal is

probably to receive job or internship applications for your current or future

hiring needs (remember that a great CEO is always hiring).

Make clear in your mind why youd like to be able to pitch to an audience.

Already heard about the www principle?

Why? To inform, to motivate, to convince, to provoke.

What? Key message.


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Who? is in the audience? What do they expect, what is theirbackground?

Its important to remember youre pitching to help you go to the next

step, not to jump this step during your pitch! Wake up: nobody will sign

you a check right after a pitch. The odds are probably better to win the

amount required at Euromillions!

We often hear founders complain that they hadnt enough time to deliver

their entire presentation. Thats absolutely not an excuse, if you fail

delivering your message in 5 (or 7 or 9!) minutes, youre probably not

prepared enough! The shorter your pitch, the better it probably is.

There are some common and regular mistakes we can observe during a

pitch: Stuff is too technical: listeners dont have your technical expertise. Too many slides Too much text: the audience will then read your slides rather than

listening to you (making your presence yeah, not necessary!). Use

always a minimal font size of 30. It helps. Really.

Reading your slides: are you telling me that Im not capable of it?The presenter has to add value to the presentation. Generally

speaking, its not bad if your slides dont reveal everything without

what you say (you can still share a more detailled presentation toinvestors afterwards)

You speak too quickly in order to be able to make your wholepresentation: my reaction is that its just becoming noise to my

ears and I do not want to hear this disturbing noise longer! Im not

saying you cannot bring ENERGY in your presentation, though!

Youre constantly looking at the screen, rather than looking youraudience! Normally, you should know whats on your slides, no? Be

sure you have the laptop screen between you and your audience (so

you can still know the slide currently shown), so you can make eye

contact with some guys. Look at one persone at a time (do no try to

scan every guy in the room). That will help you reduce your

nervousness and reading your audience. A good tip is to avoid the

pointer! If you absolutely need one, your presentation is probably

not clear enough. Or youre not sure enough of what youre

presenting me.

The 10 (+1) slides you need


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As you already know, you just have limited time to make the investor

enthousiastic on you or your project. On average:, you just have 5-7

minutes to present your project. Thats quick so youd rather be effective

and not wasting any pitching opportunity. The first 30 seconds are crucial,

as it will determine if your audience will really listen to you (or justreading their emails or play on their smartphone instead).

Youve probably already heard about Guy Kawasakis 10/20/30-rule, which

is now really common:

10 slides 20 minutes (5-7 minutes presentation, 13-15 minutes Q/A) 30 minimal font size

Id like to share with you how a compelling presentation could look like on

10(+1) slides:1. Title: this first slide gathers every contact information (people

hate loosing time searching such crucial information) and whos

speaking, the logo of the company (trivial, but Ive seen people

forgetting it) and the on which occasion (event + date) youre

presenting. Moreover, display your high concept pitch here: if you

have to wait before starting the pitch, people already know what

youre talking about and can prepare mentally on what youll

telling next.

2. Problem: describe what plausible problem youve identified andwhose concerned by this. Where is the customer pain and what

can happen to him if you dont solve it? Are you really sure that

status quo is a real problem? Use pictures if you can

3. Solution: show the uniqueness and innovation of yourproduct/service (and show it when already possible)! What kind of

value are your offering to the customer? Display your USP

(Unique Selling Proposition) but dont exaggerate: if you display

more than 3, you lose your credibility.

4. Magic Sauce: here and only here can you describe thetechnology behind your product. Often, hightech startup founder

lose themselves talking about technology, so dont makew the

same mistake! Try to explain it with pictures and diagrams, the

less words the better! Show Proof of Concept, your IP strategy (do

you have patents? Dont forget to mention it even if in software

domain, youre not really protected investors love to be

reassured thats theres a real technological innovation)

5. Market potential: show the size and expected growth of theadressable market (always give information source (market


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research studies) if applicable). You often have to evaluate it with

your own assumptions - top down approach is always dangerous

(only 1% of the market). And show your target market (OK,

youre targeting a worldwide market but wake up now, you

probably have to go step by step and dont have the resources topush your product everywhere from day one). Display you go to

market strategy here and some reference customers if

applicable.

6. Competition: present how the market lives without you, how it isstructured, your competitors and the competing technologies. No

competitor, really? Are you sure theres a market then? Rather

than showing the weaknesses of the competition, show why

youre good and the cost savings / the additional turnover for

your potential customers.7. Value Chain & Business Model: make it clear how it works,

how the money flows, show who are your partners (use their

logo). And display clearly onetime and recurring revenue.

8. Implementation roadmap: if you can show it as a timeline, doit! What are your achievements (customers, IP, technology,

partnerships, R&D project) and on what youll be focussing your

efforts during the coming months (respectively: after funding).

Include concrete milestones but show only whats important for

investors (for instance, investors dont really care about non-value

adding stuff like your desk!).

9. Team (+Board of Directors +advisors):show why youre theright team to execute this project. Display a quick CV (name,

function, education, experience) with picture of founders/key

employees. Dont try to display everyone (even if every team

member IS important) as youll lose the impact. If you already

have a BoD and not only composed from founders: GREAT, it

shows youre surrounding yourselves! And known advisors

(academics, entrerepeneurs, etc.) give you an additional

credibility (youre not developing your startup in your cellar

without talking to people!).

10. Financial overview:dont display everything, only 4 metrics arelooked by investors here: sales, EBIT (Earning Before Interest and

Taxes), cumulated Free Cash Flow (that is, your capital need),

FTEs (Full Time Equivalent). Please avoid graphs, investors can

read numbers! Show your financials in a matrix (maximum 20

fields: 4 lines (the above metrics) and max 5. years).


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11. Financial offering: who current owns your company? Displayyour financing rounds strategy (be realistic: raise money for 18

months, as raising money often takes 6-12 months - so beware to

have 12 months to work on your product!) and your exit strategy

(please, dont tell me IPO - who could rather buy you?). Its reallycommon that investors (or at least Business Angels) ask your

valuation upfront, but Id advice you not giving it upfront. Rather

tell 1mio financing for 10-30% of the company: dont

overestimate (forget what youve learnt at business school, like

discounted cash-flow, etc.!) but show that youve deeply thought

about this, and try to keep a negotiation power (most of the

time, you need the money, investors can survive without

investing, so there is kind of an asymmetry that is not for your

own sake). By the way, for early stage startups, you have always

to be open to give 10-40% of your company. Its almost project

agnostic and depends of your financing need. Investors make

their calculation with a potential buy-out (if youre pitching

10mios: minimal exit is already 10-12 millions and thats

unfortunately already not so likely for most projects and if

youre not on the market with some good traction, you just loose

credibility. If you give 5% too much to your investors who

cares? You have the money to keep going, youre aiming big if

you have success, that wont matter and if you fail, youll not

losing more anyway!

Your absolute last slide (OK, thats no more 10+1!) should be a Q&A slide,

where you have links to the presentation (presented slides as small pics)

and to backup slides (like a detailed financial plan, patent, Marketing Plan,

customer list). Display rather pictures of the slide than links.

You can also take the opportunity to give hand-outs to the investors in the

audience, and youd rather distribute it before start. There is no need to

spend lot of money for this and can keep it simple (black and white, 2slides per page printed both-sides is OK), as youd show potential bad

signals (focus on your project rather than paper) and investors rather

would have less paper (theyll receive a lot of documents from others

startups, for instance). The document youre distributing can have more

info than at the presentation and its better, as theyll take it home to

read it again quietly!

Last but not least, here are some details that could seem silly but that you

need to put on your presentation:

Add your logo on the slide master (small) and first slide Include page numbers


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Use only one level of bullet points Add diagrams, pictures and graphs (except for financials) Use one (1 only!) standard font (and which works on any PC) Watch out for ABBR. (abbreviations), write them out

Animate your body and your hands, not your slides!

The soft skills (and more) required for a

great presentation

Here, well discuss more about soft skills (or Emotional Intelligence

Quotient).

But maybe some of you have never heard of what soft skills are,

According to Wikipedia, they are behavioral competencies, which are alsoknown as interpersonal skills, or people skills, which include proficiencies

such as communication skills, conflict resolution and negotiation, personal

effectiveness, creative problem solving, strategic thinking, team building,

influencing skills and selling skills, to name a few.

Related to your presentation, its the way you interact with your audience.

How you speak is as important as what youre saying and how youre

moving (be aware of your tics and try to eliminate them).

In your pitch, DO:

use short and active sentences speak with passion (show you are HUNGRY to succeed!) but slowly share insights (not the efforts to reach where you are (who cares?)

and tell the message (not the data behind))

make slow movements change location during the pitch (dont stay frozen on your legs, but

also avoid to be continuously moving change location maximum 3

times during the pitch)

dress business like when youre pitching investors even if startupis cool and fun, the guys youve in front of you are not exactly in the

same world.

But DONT:

express non words (heu) or fillers (OK, you know) read your slides! put your hands in your pockets! have something in your hands to play with! Youre there to be

focused on your audience


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You can (and should) also use active speech technics:

Change verbs from the passive to the active voice:The sample wastaken fromto A team of four assemblers from the plant took

samples from

Replace is with an action verb: We found three out offiveassembly lines were inefficient.to Poor maintenance contributed

to 43% of downtime in three out of five assembly lines.

Make an is statement more concrete: We believe the decision is agood one.to The decision will save you $214K per month in

purchasing costs.

Link assertions to your experience by eliminating seem: The datawould seem to indicate thatto Our experience in similar

situations leads us to suggest that

You need to always finish your presentation on some positive notes, like:

Repeat the 4 most important points of the pitch Thank the audience for the attention Stay in front of the audience (some people might want to applaud, if

youre really good!)

Open the discussion, Q&A sessionNow youve terminated your pitch, but youve done just half of the work.

Questions and Answers (Q&A) session is as much important as the pitch.

Here are some tips to master this potentially stressing time:1. First LISTEN & UNDERSTAND, then answer2. Be humble and open-minded3. If necessary, reformulate the question (so you can earn some

precious time to better answer)

4. Answer as concretely and precisely as possible5. If you do not have an answer admit it! Take notes, thank for the

question and follow up the same day(or as quickly as possible)

6. Never answer a question with YES, BUT, NO, BUT7.

Beware of participants looking for attention: Dont start a debatecontest

8. Golden rule: stay calm and never lieHere are some last tips for pitching:

Let the CEO present (do not switch speakers in


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Know the numbers related to your business (revenue, profits, burn-rate). You have no excuse like: I dont know, my cofounder who

wrote the plan.

Yes it is a show: sell your company as if you were selling a product!

If there are technical problems at beginning of the presentation, usethis time to present yourself (you dont have much time left, youd

rather be effective!).

Do not tell those old lies (or try to invent new ones!):

Our financial projections are conservative Gartner, Forester etc. says ourmarket will be 100 Mio. in 5 Y. A big company is signing our contract next week Key employees will join us as soon as we get funded Several investors are already in due diligence The big companies are too old, dumb and slow to be a threat Patents make our business defendable All we have to do is get 1% of the market We have the first-mover advantage We have a world-class team- all out of the same lab? There is no competition (so there is probably no market?)

Pitching is the key to open doors not to get financing! Remember what is

your goal for pitching? You never make twice the same pitch, as you often

pitch to different audiences. So make it clear in your mind and in yourpresentation.

The last but most forgotten tip for a great pitch is probably the

preparation and training. As you never get a second chance to make a

good first impression, youd better have done your homework before:

know your audience in advance (whos in, what do they want, etc.) be aware of Murphys law: get there early and have your own

fallback solutions

Have a timer open to know where youre in the presentation think on all potential questions of the investors Perfection is rare, so train yourself! Film yourself, practice in front of

your mirror, your family, your friends, employees, partners.

Dont be shy, ask people to review your pitch, even non techies who dont

know about your expertise area. But find people desiring to tell you the

truth, not people admiring you blissfully or people who always say OK!


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About the author:

@SebastienFlury was a startup mentor for 5 years before starting his first

business in 2012. He's also blogging on startupolic.com and hunting deals

for an angel investing platform. Since his dive into entrepreneurship, he

has seen a few hundreds (or more?) startup pitches, from early stage to

mature companies. With this experience and a great presentation from the

amazing Jean-Pierre Vuilleumier (Managing Director of CTI Invest, a Swiss

Business Angels and Venture Capital association) in mind, he thought that

some tips on how to pitch your startup could be helpful. The need for pitch

coaching/training is really present, for first time entrepreneurs as well as

for more experienced ones. He doesn't pretend to reinvent the art of

pitching, but sincerely hope that it will help you make a greater impact

how to make a perfect pitch

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