Investment Pitch Prototype

There are three things that you can put in your presentation that will impress investors more than anything else.

Good prototype evidence of a strong devoted customer or fan base.

The third thing.

Actual paying customers.

If you can talk about those three things in a compelling way.

Doesn’t matter if you’re short ugly weird nasally voice none of that stuff will matter.

Investors are gonna be clamoring to you to invest.

You can’t talk about those three things it’s gonna be very very hard.

You can look great.

Have a perfect PowerPoint.

Have great eye contact have a commanding voice and very unlikely you’re going to raise money.

Let’s talk about these one at a time.

The prototype these days with almost anything in the technology space.

I’m not talking about biotech of course but for anything that is Web based Internet based.

The cost of doing business has fallen so dramatically.

You don’t have to hire tons of people you don’t have to have huge headquarters.

People can work virtually you don’t have to buy huge server farms you can use the cloud.

There’s so many tools that can be gotten for free or for very little.

You should be able to make a prototype.

The days are gone where you can just come up with an idea on a napkin or a piece of paper a few slides and people throw money at you they expect you to do your due diligence and these days that includes creating a prototype.

So no matter what it is an Internet product some piece of technology a new broom whatever it is create the product.

I don’t care how great the slide is you can spend a million dollars not that you would on fancy art for your PowerPoint.

It will never be as good as an actual prototype.

If it’s an app that you can show on your phone and how it works if it is a new broom something you can hold up or sweep the room you need to be able to show a prototype of what you’re doing when people can visualize it and actually see it not having to use their visual capacity.

It makes it really easy for the investor.

It simplifies it.

They don’t have to stop and try to visualize it in their mind’s eye.

Their actual I can see it doesn’t have to be a perfect prototype.

My goodness Apple introduces products all the time that are not perfect and yet they’re the most profitable corporation in the world.

So it doesn’t have to be perfect but it needs to be something that people can see.

They can taste it if not literally than figuratively.

And that is going to be so powerful in your presentation and it’s going to help you stand out from the others who just have slides.

The next thing that’s important to have is some form of rabid fan base.

Now you may recall Facebook didn’t just start off saying well gosh there’s a billion people in the world who have Internet connections so if we can just get one percent of them to use our social network we’ll be.

That’s not how they started.

They focused just on students at Harvard and they dominated that market.

And then they expanded to Ivy League schools and then other colleges and then the.

That’s how it expanded.

So you need to figure out what your base is and show some kind of a user who’s excited.

They might not be paying money.

Facebook users don’t pay money.

By and large but show that you have a committed fan base.

Have a testimonial these days.

I think you don’t see it that often but I think it’s very effective.

Just capture it on your cell phone.

20 seconds of video from a rabid fan of your product and I would show that video I would embed it right in your PowerPoint presentation make sure that you have speakers attached and get there early enough to practice it but a testimonial from a really enthusiastic fan.

It’s very powerful to investors.

That’s what they want because they know if you have one you may have more if you can attract more and more.

A business will follow.

Sometimes people start businesses whether it’s Twitter Instagram and they’re not even sure where it’s going to make money.

But it’s just so well-designed it’s meeting a need.

It just explodes.

A user base and ultimately that’s of value to someone.

Now the third thing I mentioned is just wildly attractive to investors is money.

No go figure.

Investors are doing this because they want to make money.

So if they see that you already have revenue they’re practically salivating now.

This doesn’t apply all the time.

Certainly if you had something so huge like Twitter and you don’t have any revenue you can still be valued at billions of dollars.

If it just has such rapid rapid growth.

But for many other businesses especially if it’s not in the technology realm having actual committed customers clients who pay money that’s powerful.

Do not bury that to many entrepreneurs spend all their time talking about the design of the product the software design elements of it.

Investors don’t care about that by and large they want to see that you’ve got a product that there’s a need.

There’s a market.

And if you already have clients customers paying you money that shows real proof of concept.

So don’t bury that again.

You don’t see this very often.

I would recommend you pull that cell phone out capture video.

It could be 10 seconds of a customer talking about why they liked your product why they either advertisers pay money for advertising on your site or hire your service or paid good money for your software whatever it is.

If you have a paying customer you’re a light years ahead of most entrepreneurs who only have concepts or only have PowerPoint slides.

Let’s face it anybody can put together PowerPoint slides any business to any high risk any middle school student can put together a bunch of slides not that many people get to that next hurdle of having a paying customer.

So if you have paying customers even if it’s small even if it’s only a few thousand dollars at some level it shows a proof of concept.

So put that into the presentation ideally with a short video clip that talked about who your customers are.

Use their own words do that and your pitch for venture capital for angel investors will be much much more powerful.

So that’s your homework now really sit down and think Do I have a prototype.

If so get it ready.

Do I have any committed enthusiast for my product and a regular users find out who they are get.

If nothing else a testimonial blurb from them in tax but ideally video finally.

Who are your paying customers.

Get that together right now.