What is a pitch?
A pitch is basically delivering a business plan verbally. A pitch typically takes the form of an entrepreneur or group of entrepreneurs presenting or describing their ideas to prospective investors.
Prepare
Structure
Entrepreneurs usually start by stating what percentage of equity in the business they are willing to exchange for how much capital. The presenter then describes the opportunity and concludes with a Q&A session. If an offer is made by an investor and it is accepted by the presenter, due diligence would then be undertaken to ensure that the investment opportunity is as it was described and that the key financials stand up to scrutiny.
Questions you HAVE to answer
- What is your product/service?
- What makes it unique?
- Who are your customers/target audience?
- How do you intend to acquire those customers?
Content
If you can tell a good story and make an emotional connection, you’re going to be more memorable and more connected to the real world. Investors are bored with spreadsheets, valuations and numbers. These are important but what really matters in a pitch, especially in the early stage, is the product’s market potential and the team’s skill to deliver.
Time
I can’t stress this point enough. Timing is really critical. The less time your pitch takes, the better. If you can’t summarize what you do in two comprehensible sentences and know what details are important, your pitch is going to be a confusing trainwreck. Because time is important, you need to develop an absolute focus on the core components of your pitch.
Remember to move at a continuous pace and not to rush at the end or get stuck on one point for too long.
Practice
You want to leave a good impression with your pitch. Therefore, you should practice the presentation, anticipate questions and, ideally, answer them in the presentation or know what you would respond. Knowing the competition and differentiating yourself from it is crucial here.
Quick presentation tips
Show the big picture before you go into the details. This helps people, who aren’t super familiar with your project.
Put numbers into perspective. Make numbers more relatable, by saying things like the device can store X Songs instead of saying the device has Y Gigabytes of storage.
Show that you’re passionate about your project. How can you expect other people to be excited about your project if your voice sounds like you’re about to fall asleep?