How to Present to Investors
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How to Present to Investors
1–10 of 23 posts
Re: How to Present to Investors
#2Too boilerplate to be worth anything. Bet exactly zero companies got funded this way.
Re: How to Present to Investors
#3Too boilerplate to be worth anything. Bet exactly zero companies got funded this way.
I found this bit pretty insightful:
"At this point, the first 5 minutes are almost up and there’s just time to run through an agenda slide, which covers all the usual ground (e.g., product, market size, team, etc).
"From here, many entrepreneurs roll right on to tell the story in greater detail. But your 5 minutes are up, and we suggest you pause and check in with your listeners. Most likely, they have seen businesses in the past which they think are similar. Maybe they have some biases based on prior experience in a similar market. It’s best to flush those out early so you can address them as you go through your presentation. So after laying out the agenda, we like to ask the investors whether there are any particular areas of concern or questions we should be sure to address.
Re: How to Present to Investors
#4Too boilerplate to be worth anything. Bet exactly zero companies got funded this way.
I found this bit pretty insightful: "At this point, the first 5 minutes are almost up and there’s just time to run through an agenda slide, which covers all the usual ground (e.g., product, market size, team, etc). "From here, many entrepreneurs roll right on to tell the story in greater detail. But your 5 minutes are up, and we suggest you pause and check in with your listeners. Most likely, they have seen businesse…
If its good business the right investors will poke 'through' your presentation to find the right answers. No good investor will skip on a break-through business because of a shoddy presentation.
It might seem that from the authors prose that they belive that their presentation skills got them funding - which is why this is all wrong and sends exactly the wrong message out. Most first time entrepreneurs who raise funding can't stop gushing how they were able to convince investors - the root cause is very rarely that simple. Fund raising is not about 'convincing' anyone - it can almost never be done - more often than not its more about 'discovering' the right investors and your ppt has no role to play.
Re: How to Present to Investors
#5Too boilerplate to be worth anything. Bet exactly zero companies got funded this way.
I think the most compelling point about the article is the emphasis on stacking your cards for the first 5 minutes.
I've seen many entrepreneurs approach pitching like a rolling boulder, where they think they gain momentum as more time goes on. More often than not, this isn't the case.
Re: How to Present to Investors
#6After going through a bunch of their other articles, seems like its a bad idea of sequoia to do something like this.
Most of their entrepreneurs will suffer from a selection bias for obvious reasons. Almost every article does a shoddy job decoupling correlation from causation like this one.
Re: How to Present to Investors
#7Earlier quoted context omitted.
I found this bit pretty insightful: "At this point, the first 5 minutes are almost up and there’s just time to run through an agenda slide, which covers all the usual ground (e.g., product, market size, team, etc). "From here, many entrepreneurs roll right on to tell the story in greater detail. But your 5 minutes are up, and we suggest you pause and check in with your listeners. Most likely, they have seen businesse…
If its good business the right investors will poke 'through' your presentation to find the right answers. No good investor will skip on a break-through business because of a shoddy presentation. It might seem that from the authors prose that they belive that their presentation skills got them funding - which is why this is all wrong and sends exactly the wrong message out. Most first time entrepreneurs who raise fund…
I don't think our presentation skills got us funded. But I do think our ability to persuade investors, recruits, partners etc to work with us -- even though we had no relevant experience -- was critical to our success. To do that, you have to communicate with your audience in a compelling way. Everyone has their own style and way of doing it. I'm just sharing what worked for me.
Re: How to Present to Investors
#8Earlier quoted context omitted.
I found this bit pretty insightful: "At this point, the first 5 minutes are almost up and there’s just time to run through an agenda slide, which covers all the usual ground (e.g., product, market size, team, etc). "From here, many entrepreneurs roll right on to tell the story in greater detail. But your 5 minutes are up, and we suggest you pause and check in with your listeners. Most likely, they have seen businesse…
If its good business the right investors will poke 'through' your presentation to find the right answers. No good investor will skip on a break-through business because of a shoddy presentation. It might seem that from the authors prose that they belive that their presentation skills got them funding - which is why this is all wrong and sends exactly the wrong message out. Most first time entrepreneurs who raise fund…
Sometimes people misrepresent themselves in a presentation. The explanation wasn't clear or they've described themselves as something that they're not. That can turn anyone away if the alternate interpretation is something that the investor has seen many times and have known not to work.
This, coupled with the fact that almost all ideas are either iteration, combination or derivation of other ideas makes it quite a frequent occurrence if not careful.
Re: How to Present to Investors
#9It appears that Sequoia's new Grove system doesn't allow user commenting. Which is somewhat of a shame, as it makes the posts very one-sided and unopen to debate, which is what appears to be happening here in the HN comments.
Re: How to Present to Investors
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
I found this bit pretty insightful: "At this point, the first 5 minutes are almost up and there’s just time to run through an agenda slide, which covers all the usual ground (e.g., product, market size, team, etc). "From here, many entrepreneurs roll right on to tell the story in greater detail. But your 5 minutes are up, and we suggest you pause and check in with your listeners. Most likely, they have seen businesse…
If its good business the right investors will poke 'through' your presentation to find the right answers. No good investor will skip on a break-through business because of a shoddy presentation. It might seem that from the authors prose that they belive that their presentation skills got them funding - which is why this is all wrong and sends exactly the wrong message out. Most first time entrepreneurs who raise fund…
Good presentation == good communication. If you can't communicate your idea simply and succinctly, you'll have a tough time raising rounds.
This is precisely why YC only allots 10 minutes per interview. It forces founders to hone their message and prep with quick fire answers to important questions regarding viability and scalability.