Investors hear pitches continually throughout the year. There are so many that one's eyes can glaze over. From time to time, an entrepreneur will make a pitch and the investor's eyes light up. It's because investors are listening for a few key things that show you have a real business with real growth. The rest is filler. Every entrepreneur has a story--many are interesting, some are not. But for investing purposes there has to be 5 key elements to capture their interest. Here they are:
1. Real traction--entrepreneurs who have sales and show it are head and shoulders above the rest. Most talk about the traction they will have in the FUTURE but not what they have today. In an investors mind, this equates to "No Traction".
2. Real pain point--the entrepreneur has found a real pain point in the market and is filling it. Someone once said, customers pay for pain to go away -- they don't pay for nuisances or inconveniences.
3. Real team -- they have someone building it and someone selling it and those team members know what they are doing.
4. Real product -- the product works and is non-trivial to build. It's more than just spin marketing.
5. Real growth prospects -- the market opportunity has strong growth potential and is not going to run out of steam in a year or two.
Those are the elements that light up the investor room if you really have it.
No comments:
Post a Comment