5 Tips on How to Pitch a Startup

OCTOBER 2, 2016 || SHYAMOLIE BIYANI

1. Background research: Just like they’ve done research on you, you need to know your investor. What does their portfolio look like? Most essentially - are they funding any potential competitors? How does your startup fit into their vision? Create a conversation and connection with the investors, as you need trust for them to put in millions of dollars into your idea.

2. Timing: a lot of venture capital firms meet on Monday mornings. If you pitch Monday afternoon, you wait a whole week for to hear back, and your pitch might become stale as other start-ups pitch to the firm

3. Presentation: if you have a pitch desk and narrate it aloud, nobody cares. Your vocal presentation needs to add, go beyond, and build upon the basic frames on the pitch deck. Can you do a live demo of the product?

4. Sell it: Each step and growth stage of your startup should be sold, and sold hard. Every headline on the pitch deck should be a stand-alone, self-explanatory selling point.

5. Know the competition: don’t underestimate but assess your competition’s weaknesses and strengths. How does your startup compare to them? How are you planning to take out the competition? What’s the survival-of-the-fittest strategy?