Tips on Startup Pitching to Investors by Prashant Pansare - Serial Entrepreneur, CoFounder Eagle10Ventures.com

1. PITCHING TO INVESTORS
Prashant Pansare
Serial Entrepreneur, Angel Investor
CoFounder Eagle10 Ventures

2. Every Pitch is always won before the act of pitching itself!
Hence, the need to understand, research, prepare right!!

3. AGENDA

4. AGENDA
➤ Introduction - why Pitch
➤ Pitch - Variations
➤ Pitch Demystified
➤ Common Mistakes
➤ Must haves
➤ Format Tips
➤ Pro Tips
➤ Hacks
➤ Q n A

5. MY JOURNEY OF LEARNING TO PITCH
Spent over 8 years in ecosystem building various startups
Pitched to Angels, VCs and
Evaluated over 600 pitches.
Helped various founders through
SLP as Director of accelerator
Bootstrapped multiple
startups,
Raised FnF, Angel, Seed
funding
Founded Angel
Investment Group
with over 80 HNIs, 3
investments, raised
angel fund
I have been rejected many times.
Learned what and how not to pitch more…

6. INTRODUCTION

7. “A true entrepreneur is a salesman first
and everything else later.
why pitching is important

8. PITCHING IS CRUCIAL
As a Founder you are pitching all the
time
➤ Self - For clarity of mind and
building the thought process
➤ Finding a co-founder
➤ Customers - acquire - interact
➤ Hire people / team
➤ Elevator Pitches
➤ Fund Raise pitch to investors
(this is what we usually focus on)
➤ Convincing family that (s)he is
doing something worthwhile in
life ;)
You have a very
short amount of
time to make the
FIRST impression
Naval Ravikanth
Founder AngelList

9. FAILING TO PITCH RIGHT HAS SERIOUS CONSEQUENCES
➤ Most of the angel investors / key investors / mentors are
connected in ecosystem
➤ Very tough to get second chances to pitch again (with right
attention)
➤ Founder’s credibility is at stake
➤ An of course, you fail to raise the $$
➤ Most importantly, ”Lack of clarity in pitching leads to poor
execution” and vice versa

10. “Imagine running a tough race with
fierce competition…
Now imagine, running in wrong
direction !
Clarity to Pitch brings clarity to execution

11. PITCH TYPES

12. PITCH TYPES
➤ Lightening pitch (on the fly) - quick, easy, precise
➤ Hiring pitch - to build credibility and build confidence and sell
your ability as founder to execute the startup
➤ Customer pitch :- Selling the aspects that will make customer
buy the product / service
➤ Investor - > Give me the $s pitch - This is more formal in
nature usually
Angel Investor Pitch Vs Institutional Investor Pitch
As a founder your are pitching or selling your idea all the time..

13. PITCH DEMYSTIFIED

14. PITCH DEMYSTIFIED
Pitching is not just about creating a fancy deck and adding projections and
good looking market numbers to impress
Pitch has more vital ingredients other than the deck

15. PITCH DEMYSTIFIED…
➤Founder - soft skills, approach
➤Timing
➤Answering the Top 5 WHYs for investors ( What are angel
investors looking for and how to address these)
➤How to win trust (It is all about how much can investor trust
“you” to execute the startup)
➤Demo - nothing beats the proof
➤Closure - Close on high note - make them remember your
pitch
➤Q n A handling
➤Follow up
A investor bets on your ability to execute than idea itself

16. COMMON MISTAKES

17. OFTEN IGNORED ASPECTS IN PITCH
➤ Understanding the audience for pitch
➤ Defining the goal of pitch
➤ Engaging in constructive dialogue
➤ Soft Skills required for the pitch
➤ Pitch is only for getting the second meeting to discuss in depth
➤ Confusing users and customers
➤ Ground reality about fund raise, $ required, how will the funds
be deployed
➤ Most importantly, Practicing the pitch often
Nothing beats learning from mistakes and practice

18. MUST HAVES

19. PITCH - MUST HAVES IN ANY PITCH
➤ WHY - are you doing this
➤ WHAT - are your solving?
➤ HOW - is your solution useful?
➤ HOW - effective is your solution (Validation and Traction)?
➤ DEMO - nothing beats real demonstration
➤ HOW - big can you become (Market)
➤ WHO ELSE - is competing with you
Find ways to win the trust of investor by all means

20. PITCH - GOALS
➤ Create a strong impact about what you are doing
➤ Show that there is a business opportunity
➤ Convey why are you the right person for this
➤ Demonstrate that there is adoption of your solution
A lot of founders end up using a one format for all pitches!! Having a clear
goal helps to understand what outcome to expect…

21. PITCH FORMAT…

22. PITCH - FOR CO FOUNDER
➤ Highlight your passion behind solving the problem
➤ Demonstrate your commitment
➤ Showcase that you are the right person
➤ Highlight how this person can complement and build together

23. PITCH - FOR TEAM HIRING
➤ Highlight your passion behind solving the problem
➤ Show that you have put founding team together
➤ Be open and honest about burn rate and runway left
➤ Highlight the growth path, opportunities for them
➤ Be transparent and don’t pretend

24. PITCH - LIGHTENING PITCH / ELEVATOR PITCH
➤ Highlight how crucial is the problem
➤ Throw the KEY Number about customers or the impact your
solution creates
➤ Concisely mention your business model
➤ Highlight the North Star for you
➤ Avoid jargons, market, competition, media coverage,
irrelevant metrics and aspects which can be discussed later

25. PITCH - FOR ANGEL INVESTOR
➤ Highlight your passion and “Why are you doing this”
➤ Angels bet on people they can Trust, show them why should
they trust you
➤ Be open and honest about burn rate and runway left
➤ Show that you can build fast, fail fast and learn faster
➤ Highlight customer validation and engagement
➤ Be transparent and don’t pretend, Be Honest
➤ Highlight failures and what you LEARNED from them
➤ Build a relationship with Angel to understand what value can
they bring to table, and discuss it. Money should be secondary

26. PITCH - FOR VC / INSTITUTIONAL INVESTOR
➤ Highlight your passion behind solving the problem
➤ Highlight team (+ key advisors)
➤ VCs love teams, they love the real METRICs more.. show
them the key metrics
➤ Show that you can Build fast, fail fast and learn
➤ Highlight customer retention, growth trajectory
➤ Highlight competition and your USP
➤ Highlight exit possibilities. VCs want to know this clearly
➤ Clarity on how the Funds Usage

27. DIFFERENT STAGES - DIFFERENT FOCUS
Founder
Team, “Why”, External
validation, Market
potential
Core Team, Growth on key
metrics, Exit
opportunities, USP that
you have, PMF etc
All about numbers and
scale, Exit opportunities
Early Stage
Angel Stage
Institutional VC Stage

28. PRO TIPS

29. PITCH PRO TIPS
➤ Know your audience WELL - research as much you can - Great
pitch starts with research on them as person, as a fund,
funding philosophy, history of funding, type of founders
funded, team sizes, startup size, amount of funding,
startups in similar space, competitor of funds who funded
similar startups
➤ customise the pitch based on audience
➤ Understand what the audience wants to hear
➤ Build your story and credibility
➤ Make yourself memorable
➤ Show passion and commitment

30. PITCH PRO TIPS…
➤ It is OKAY to not have answers
➤ Be Honest and natural, Do not pretend to be someone else
➤ Be consistent (body language, pitch, tone, QnA etc)
➤ Engage the audience - no one easily forgets a good conversation :)
➤ Listen actively, make notes, improvise with feedback
➤ Pitch is just a warming up and should lead to follow up discussion
➤ Observe, Analyse, make notes on audience body language -
remember that body language speaks more than the word. What
excited them, what brought them to corner of seat, what made
them push back etc
➤ Find patterns in multiple pitches
➤ Pitch start - can be a memorable image with a tag line that sets the
tone
➤ People do not understand how to say NO - accept that

31. “When you ask for money, all you get
is advice,
Ask for advice and get the money
-unknown

32. HACKS

33. PITCH HACKS
Strictly, some experiments that I did, some worked and some did
not.
But, I learned a lot with these…
Don’t share this with a VC or Angel, they won’t like it : - )

34. PITCH HACKS
➤ Do the A/B Testing :)
➤ Engage in healthy debate on key aspects (or what you want to try)
➤ Do not open the pitch with question for which answer can
mislead your pitch
➤ Not all Pitches are for $s -> use opportunities to make a good
impression
➤ Research on their investments, recent articles, views , tweets,
LinkedIn Posts and tailor some aspects in deck, bring some up
in conversation
➤ Validate new strategy that you have been thinking and need some
expert opinions
➤ Contradict some key point -> many experts feel challenged and
many have the urge to correct / share learnings and experience

35. PITCH HACKS…
➤ Pitch to diverse set of people to get diverse views/opinions /
feedback
➤ Find the influencers in the field and interact, warm up the
relationship
➤ Avoid obvious points to be mentioned in detail
➤ Carefully remember the first question people ask, find a
pattern in that
➤ Engage in relevant social media
➤ Learn from Competitors or other startups
➤ Be in audience (at events) to listen to how they pitch, what
questions get asked and answered etc
➤ Read their founders interviews in media / blog / articles etc
➤ Actively engage where possible

36. QUESTIONS ?

37. “Screw it, Let’s do it
-Richard Branson

38. REFERENCE MATERIALS
➤ Top pitch decks to refer
➤ Top articles to refer for pitching right
➤ Great videos to refer to learn the art of pitching
➤ And more…
➤ Email me prashant@eagle10Ventures.com

39. “Eagle10Ventures invests in early stage
startups upto 1-2Cr, Pitch to me
Write - prashant@eagle10Ventures.com