So I’ve come to a grand conclusion throughout the time I’ve spent in TechStars: VCs and most other investors prefer to think as little as possible when it comes to investing in a company. “It’s a no brainer”. I have probably heard this phrase every single day while staying in Boston and frankly, it makes me realize that as an entrepreneur, you need to work towards making every single argument in your presentation as close to a no brainer as possible. I personally think of the pitch as a tool that answers as many of the common/general questions investors will ask you, before they ask you. If you can get those out of the way and have them bought into your product/service, then investors will have the opportunity to ask you much more interesting questions about your company other than “What is your business model?”
Here’s a tip I siphoned from Andrew Hyde: Do the work that your investors would normally do, before they do it! For example, you know that interested investors will do a fair amount of due diligence on your company before ever making an investment. So, why not hand them a fat packet of all of the due diligence you have already done and prove to them you are on top of your game and have done your homework!
As developers, we’ve realized that we should build our applications in such a way to minimize the amount of thinking the user needs to do. The less thinking the user does when accomplishing their goals, the better your user interface is, in general. Let’s begin to apply that line of thinking to how we try and pitch investors. Be on your game and do your friggin homework. It’s a no brainer.
