4. Pitching Process
Traction Introduction
High Concept
Pitch
Elevator Pitch Meeting Funding
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Grow your
Startup!
What You Need to Go to Next Process
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Middle Men
A Good High-
concept PitchFind your
Traction
Crafted
Elevator Pitch A Great Deck Term Sheet
5. Traction Speaks louder than words
• Traction is a measure of how well your products received by
customers a.k.a
Obtain Product/Market Fit
• Proved by:
– verified hypotheses about customers problems
– # Registered Users/ Non-paid Users/
– # Pilot Customers / Customers
– $ Revenue/ Profit
• Investors are interested in how much is your traction and how big is
the market.( How many customers will pay for your product
translate to potential revenue/profit)
“If you have incredible traction in what seems to be a large market, you can raise
money no matter what the product and team look like — although a good product
and team will improve your terms.” – Pitching Hacks by Venture Hacks
6. Why do I need Introduction?
“VCs are generally bombarded by requests for meetings, so a warm
introduction helps an entrepreneur’s request float to the top of the list.”
– CHRIS WAND, Foundry Group, Investor in Zynga
• Use middlemen as an initial practice to describe your startup in
simple language. When they’re getting interested, you’ve be able to
convince your employee, your costumers, and your investors about
your startup.
• People who makes the best intro:
– Entrepreneurs who are backed with your target investors
– Investors who co-invest with your target investors
– Market, Technology, and products experts at dominant companies
– Lawyers, Accountants, sundry industry people
• Ask them how well they know the investors? What exp. Do they
have together? What makes your company interesting enough for
them to make an intro?
7. What makes a good High-Concept Pitch?
• High Concept Pitch is a sentence or a phrase which
represents your startup to be easily spread out in words.
• How to make a “good” high concept pitch:
– Brief
– your audience should already understand the building
blocks
“Summarize the company’s business on the back of a
business card.”
– SEQUOIA CAPITAL, Investors in Google
8. Example of using High-Concept Pitch
• Agate Studio is a leading game development company from
Indonesia. Our expertise lies in developing entertainment
games as well as games for advertising, training/simulation,
and education.
– From agatestudio.com
• Example of High concept pitch:
Turns your Games to Reality
• Other example of high concept pitch:
– The entrepreneurs behind the entrepreneurs – (Sequoia
Capital)
– We network networks – (Cisco)
– Flickr for Video – (YouTube)
– Friendster for Dogs – (Dogster)
9. Why should I craft an Elevator pitch?
• Elevator Pitch is a brief statement that can be easily forwarded by
your middlemen with high recommendation
• Imagine you should present your company in less than 60 seconds
to investors while you’re in the elevator
• Parts of Elevator Pitch in Order:
– Products and vision description (High Concept Pitch)
– Problem and Opportunity your startup answering
– Traction / Social Proof
– Team pas successes
– Why are you interested in the investor?
– Call to Action / Contact Information
• Elevator Pitch is also useful for cold e-mail potential investor
without a middlemen
10. Example of Elevator Pitch
Subject: Introducing Ning to Blue Shirt Capital:
Hi [Middleman],
Thanks for offering to introduce us to Blue Shirt Capital. I've attached
a short presentation about our company, Ning. Briefly, Ning lets
you create your own social network for anything. For free. In 2
minutes. It's as easy as starting a blog. Try it at: http://ning.com
We built Ning to unlock the great ideas from people all over the
world who want to use this amazing medium in their lives.
We have over 115,000 user-created networks, and our page views
are growing 10% per week. We previously raised $44M from
Legg Mason and others, including myself.
Before Ning, I started Netscape (acquired by AOL for $4.2B) and
Opsware (acquired by HP for $1.6B).
Blue Shirt’s investments in companies like Extensive Enterprises tell
me that they could be a great partner for Ning. We're starting
meetings with investors next week, and I would love to show
Blue Shirt what we're building at Ning.
Best, Marc Andreessen
xyz@ning.com
415.555.1212
High Concept Pitch
Problems
Traction
Team Successes
Why interested?
Contact Info
11. What is a Deck?
• A Deck is power point presentation that provide further information
about your startup.
• General Template:
1. Cover logo, contact info, tagline
2. Summary your High Concept Pitch
3. Team Past accomplishments of the team
4. Problems and Solution Your Products try to offer market solution
5. Technology how your technology differentiate existing solution
6. Marketing Who are your customers? How big they are?
7. Sales What’s the business model? How your startup gain revenue and
profits?
8. Competition Why costumers use your product instead of others?
9. Milestones Describe your future actions
10. Conclusion Summary / Inspirational Quotes which describe the company
11. Financing Dates, amount of money to raise, how you use the money?
• Tell the story with the slides, put your investor into their blinking child
eyes
12. Beginning of your Journey
• Terms sheet is broad of investment credentials that turns
into actual terms of investment
• Investors will formally fund your startup based on Actual
terms of investment which comes from Term sheet.
• Actual Terms of Investment consist of:
1. Stock Purchase Agreement
2. Investors Rights Agreement
3. Certificate of Incorporation
4. Co-sale Agreement
5. Voting Agreement
13. @agatestudio
“Every startup has a chance to change the world, by
bringing not just a new product, but an entirely new
institution into existence.”
– Eric Ries, KPCB, Investors in Netscape
