Even though VCs are looking for technical founders, most VCs are MBAs with financial backgrounds. In my experience Angels have a bias towards founders with a sales/marketing background. So learn to talk like an MBA (sounding smarter than you are). It really helps. Even if the investor is technical, technical talk with MBA flair is a huge plus.
I am technical founder myself (PhD Robotics). As technical as it gets. I was once given some pretty amazing critical feedback by a VC after talking to me and my direct competitor. This VC said, “Saurav I know you have more traction than X, but when I talk to X I just feel like he’s got a sexy story, and I want to talk to him more”.
You can imagine my frustration. Ugh. So, I’m going to make sure you don’t make the same mistakes I did.
In less than 5 minutes today you will get:
1. A list of sexy keywords you need to impress investors
2. A little secret tip to impresses investors
3. 5-tips on how to ace the investor pitching process
Let’s go 🚀
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Sexy keywords every first-time founder needs to learn
Sales
Product-led Growth (PLG), Sales Cycle, Sales Motion, Go To Market, TAM, Enterprise/Consumer, B2B, B2C
Market
Adjacencies, Optionality, Go to market, Land and expand, Customer profile, Beachhead market
Financials
Burn Rate, Zero Cash Date/Cash Out Date, Runway, Risk-Adjusted, Discounted values (volume discounts etc)
Want to know what these words mean? Keep on reading to the end where I’ll tell you more about how I can coach you on what they mean and how to use them.
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A secret little tip that always impresses investors
Whenever an investor asks you about your strategy. Segment it strategy into 3 buckets. Then provide a framework for each analysis/hypothesis – why we use this model/framework. Why do this? Well because investors have tiny attention spans and you need to give them an answer they can digest and remember.
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5-Tips to ace any investor process
- A deep dive deck will help. Although you won’t have time to present it live, it should be shareable. Use a lightweight 10-15 slide deck for your live pitch.
- A lot of the questions will be the same across investor calls. Some questions will be the same worded differently. Record every question so you can prep an answer and use it for the next investor.
- Investors will try to pin you down on details and find a reason to say no with aggressively demotion focused questions. Acknowledge the question, address quickly and then focus on promoting growth. Do not get stuck in downward spiral of arguing a demotion question
- Keep a Data Room Ready: Keep clean and structured due diligence data ready. Some key data; financials, sales pipeline, customer contracts, cap table.
Remember, you can always ask a question to clarify a question.
