Tips on Pitching to Investors

I went to a seminar some ago (part of the Enterprise Tuesday series) by Alex van Someren (nCipher) and Adrian Critchlow (AlertMe) on how to pitch to venture capital firms. You can get the slides describing how to pitch, but I've also made some very brief notes.

Make 10 slides, consisting of:

• Company logo
• Business overview
• Management Team
• Market
• Product
• Business model
• Strategic relationships (with other companies)
• Competition
• Barriers to entry (for you and for others)
• Financial overview (3 to 4 years, if you're talking to a VC. What are the drivers, how can profit be increased?)
• How will you use of the money you're asking for (first three purchases or hires)
• Company's capital and current valuation

(Obviously not all of these can be one slide!)

Note that if you show a demonstration of your product, it's best to record it, rather than do it live! Videos work well for this.

This also seems a sensible way of thinking about a new product idea, rather than just being useful for investor pitches.