3 Things to Do Before You Start Writing
The investor pitch.
Those three little words often send even the most confident CEOs into a state of panic.
Some things that loop in your interior monologue playlist could be:
How am I supposed to say all of this in 2 mins? That's not right, these people must be crazy.
Where do I start? I'm supposed to show them how impressive I am in 2 mins, that means I have to start with the most important stuff first, right?
2 mins? What could you possibly say in 2 mins to make people give me their money?
I can't say everything in 2 mins. WTF?
There must be another way. 2 mins is impossible.
For those of you who doubt me, it is possible. It's difficult, yes. But it's possible. If there's anything I've learnt along the way, it's that anything worth doing isn't easy, otherwise everyone would be doing it. And from some of the pitches I've seen at pitch competitions and even the first drafts I see from my clients, not everyone is doing it properly. The pitch requires effort. Thought. Time. Patience - and someone to help you (insert shameless endorsement) do it.
I've often been asked to pitch or introduce myself when I attend pitch events and I'm a classic case of how, when you're in the thick of what you do and you know your product so well, it's often extremely difficult to articulate it off -the-cuff in a short amount of time. That is, unless you practice it.
I've met a lot of clients that naturally, as confident and experienced CEOs, go on their 'gut' and wing-it during pitch rehearsals. Only to have everyone tell them they're rubbish and they become very defeatist. Of course they do! You've just told them their life's work is crap because they couldn't tell you about it in 2mins. That doesn't mean it's awful......but, yeah, it kinda does.
The investor pitch, the 2, 3 or 5 min pitch, is make-or-break for your work. You need investments to get to the next step and you've worked really hard to stand in front of the investors you have in front of you, be that hand-picked by your lovely accelerator or the hard-work of your intern to get you in front of the right people. All you have is 2, 3 or 5 mins (sometimes even 30 seconds if it's super hardcore). At the end of the day, the VC's and Angel Investors don't see your hard-work and sacrifice. They see your pitch. That's it.
Where do you start? It all comes down to the planning and reworking:
1. Brainstorming
Definitely #1. You want to tell everyone everything. But you can't. So the closest you can come to that is to grab a big white board, or glass, or mirror (when resources aren't at your fingertips) and write down everything you know. EVERYTHING. It'll take a while and will take up a lot of space (see why I didn't say piece of paper?). Do it with you team, your mentors, your wife, your best friend, anyone who knows your product and knows you.
Feel better now? Of course you do.
The tricksy bit now is to wait a day. Just a day. Sleep on it. Come back to it and identify the most important things. If I was going to give these people my money, what would convince me to do it? The fact that his tech guy worked at Google? Or that their client base grows by 64% MOM? Or because it's an $8 billion that no one has used these specific things for?
2. Take-Away
To me, this means take-out (by Britishisms definition), but I'm not asking you to get Chinese. This means that once you have a pitch-ready script, pitch it to your peeps and ask them what the three take-aways are, ie what are the three things they remember. This is kind of like the magician's 'Is This Your Card' trick - if it's not what you want the take-aways to be, you've messed up the trick. Don't forget, as your interior monologue whines at you, you've packed a lot of information into those 3 mins, so the three things they take away are important. If you're presenting at Demo Day, you're one of ten. If you're one of ten, you may be pitching second-to-last and people need to remember you. If they tell you it's not their card, you need to go back to the drawing board and look at your message. What are the three things you want to be remembered for and keep pitching and reworking till they say 'that's my card'.
3. Questions = Gaps
Sometimes you don't get the luxury of a Q&A session. What's often very impressive if you do, however, is when there aren't so many. When there are fewer questions, it means that you didn't leave any gaps in your pitch. The lesson there? You know what you're talking about.
How are you different = you left out your competition slide.
Where do you plan to go after your BETA testing = you didn't show them how you plan to grow.
Gaps in your pitch means a couple of things:
investors may fill the gaps themselves with bogus information because you didn't provide it for them
investors may think you're hiding something
investors can smell a newbie a mile away - you've lost a lot of credibility ie, this fella doesn't know his arse from his elbow.
When you pitch to your peeps, have a trial Q&A part. Example: So, I don't get it, can anyone do it or do I have to buy X and Y to use it? Your demo/explanation of your product is rubbish. GREAT! Go over that and re-work it till they get it. Quite often, you don't need to go into as much detail as you think you do. In this case, find a child. I'm being deadly serious. Find an intelligent child and explain what your product does, if they get it, you're on the home stretch. Adults think too much - children are simple creatures. And so is your product, right?
To know your product inside and out and be able to tell people in 2 mins means YOU KNOW WHAT YOU'RE DOING and alarm bells go off in the audience's head about how impressive/professional/believable/trustworthy/credible/awesome you are. If you're fumbling about for too long, taking 7 mins to tell someone about how 'easy' and 'quick' your product is, they've checked their phones, text their friends and are thinking about lunch.
Ah ha! You're thinking to yourself, but steps 2 and 3 are once you've written the pitch. WRONG. Those are drafts. Your pitch is a work in progress - a constant work in progress - so yes, you're pitching a pitch, but it's Draft #1 of Draft #Many. This is early stage pitch scripting. Ironing out the kinks. After all, no one wants to go on stage with a wrinkled shirt that implies you've been dragged through a hedge backwards. Put the time, effort and work into your pitch. You might not get another chance.
