As a founder of a hardware or software platform with potential applications across many markets, it’s natural to want to showcase your solution’s broad capabilities to investors, customers, partners, and distributors. The cumulative opportunity is indeed massive. However, to successfully raise money and execute effectively, you need to focus on a single use case.
To capture attention during your pitch, you must identify a clear target market and a compelling pain point that your solution addresses. This is most persuasive when built around one type of customer and related pain points, demonstrating your deep understanding of their specific needs. If you try to cover too many use cases, your pitch risks sounding overly broad and generic.
Read MoreYou have a great new business idea, you have built the minimal viable product (MVP), you have some initial revenues -- and now you want to raise some angel funding. What do you do next? Before you reach out and apply to every angel group in town, consider the following.
1. Determine how much you need to raise and the milestones you will hit
Founders “sell” milestones to investors and leave it to investors to ask themselves two questions: 1. Will this team hit these milestones with this amount of capital raised? 2. If they hit the milestones will they be attractive to the next round of investors?
Be cautious about how much money you ask for in this round. Ask for only enough to prove the next level of market and product traction, building in a bit of a contingency. If you shoot too high you may have to score with multiple angel groups, spend the next six months fundraising, and risking having to return the money if you do not complete the round.
2. Create your elevator pitch
Write a 30 second pitch that you could deliver in a ride in the elevator, with no props. Try it out on people and refine it until it is just right. This pitch could be your outline for your pitch deck, which avoids the common problem of including slides in a deck just because the writer already had some great graphics
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