How to Pitch Your Startup

Startup Idea

Problem must to have these characteristics

Solution should not seek for problem. Find problem first.

You’re looking have some unfair advantage called “insight”

How do I package up my idea and present them to an investor?

Of groups good enough to make it to interviews, more than half blow the application

Probably the biggest thing people don’t understand about the process is the importance of expressing yourself clearly.

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Don’t sell us, we (investors) will sell ourselves

Main questions

Do I understand idea?

Am I excited by idea?

Do I like the team?

But, Just be CLEAR [about your idea].

Be clear

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A clear idea is the foundation for growth

By being clear, it would be shared by the word of mouth.

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Before anyone can remember, they have to understand

How to make it easy to understand?

I make it legible (разборчивый), simple and obvious.

This essay would focus about being legible

Legibility

Legible slides are ones that even old people in the back row with bad eyesight can read.

Similarly, legible ideas can be understood by people who know nothing about your business.

To get:

Cofounders

Users

Investors

Employees

Shareholders

… you need your idea to be shared quickly and efficiently.

Avoid:

Ambiguity - something abstract, or understood in two ways

Complexity - not mixing a bunch of things in your description

Mystery - anything a general public would not understand, such as:

Jargon
Technical words
Anything that is fake (This, that)

Ignorable - use of language that people ignore.

Marketing style of speak
MBA or CEO speak
Buzzwords

Be:

Conversational - good for word of mouth, usual type of speech

No Jargon

No Preamble (предыстория)

Reproducible (important one) - Can person imagine it? Can people (investors) understand what would it take to create a company? If they can’t, then they can’t ask questions or understand the nuances of the business.

How to make it reproducible

What are you making?

What is the problem?

Who is the customer?

Examples

Concise, descriptive, easy to understand, reproducible and imaginable

Doesn’t perfectly connect to what sort they’re making, but they’re intrigued. And it is connected LinkedIn.

People do not need understand How you would do in description

X for Y

Like: LinkedIn for whatever

X for Y is OK, but many people abuse it wrong

Should I use X for Y?

X is household name? You need to use known, billion-dollar company

Does Y want X? Why the target need the X model?

Y should be a huge market

What doesn’t work?

Buffer for Snapchat → smaller than snapchat

Summary for

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Lead with what. Not why or how

It’s hard to focus intently on over 1000 application even if it’s your job. So be concise. Make the time I spend on your idea efficient.

Be concise

use as few words as possible

The concision give the information about you as a team.

You have thought deeply about your idea. Because you thought so deeply about and because you’ve practiced talking about it so much and you’ve gotten really good at getting people excited and understanding really quickly, you probably have figured out how to do it in a short amount of time.