I've rewritten a lot of pitch decks over time and a lot of them are really bad--mostly because founders have been told what should go in them without a lot of consideration as to why. Somewhere along the line, someone came up with things that are supposed to go in a pitch without ever asking investors how they take in a story.
Here what I want to see in the video below...
Powered by OpenReelHere are the notes...
1) Don't keep me in suspense as to what it is.
2) The team slide isn't as important as having the human in front of me, or hearing about your reputation elsewhere. Team is important, but team slides are boring.
3) Get to the money part soon! How do you make money?
4) Then, how do you make A LOT of money? You sell lemonade for 50 cents a cup, but how do you sell enough lemonade to go public??
5) Why is your product special? This isn't that stupid competitive chart where you have all the checkboxes and no one else does. I want to understand if there's a reason why all of the sudden this angle is possible, and why others aren't likely to have the same advantage you will.
6) What are you going to do with this money--specifically, what are the GOALS for the round, not how long will it take to spend. Anyone can spend a million bucks in a year.
If you think you could use some help formulating your pitch for an investor, and you might want to do some good in the process, I'm running a series of pitch workshops called "Fix Your Pitch for Good!" for charity.
Startups can sign up to go through an abridged 30 min VC meeting, and then we'll talk for 30 minutes about what could be improved, how to organize it better, and what VCs need to see.
And if you're just curious, you can just come watch.
For startups pitching, the donation is $250, which will be 100% disbursed to some charities I'm currently raising money for, like the Challenged Athletes Foundation, Team for Kids, and ScriptEd. For attendees, the suggested donation is $25.