10 things to know before you pitch a VC for money

This week the good people at TED put up a good presentation on things to keep in mind when pitching your ideas to a VC (what's that?) for funding. The presenter is David S. Rose, a business-savvy, fast-talking New Yorker who has been called a "world conquering entrepreneur" by NewsWeek Magazine and has been dubbed The Pitch Coach for his many years of helping entrepreneurs pitch their ideas to to potential investors. (Here's a longer post I wrote back in February on David S. Rose). Checkout the TED University talk below. Some of the material may seem obvious to you, but coming from a business leader who has successfully pitched for millions of dollars and helped others pitch for millions more, David is a very credible source. In this TED University talk, David is talking specifically about "the pitch" to a VC, which is different from a 45-minute talk at a technical conference, but there is much in there that can be applied to other types of presentations as well. More than anything else, David is stressing that the presentation to investors is all about you. The top ten characteristics you're conveying, says David, are personal. You are asking people to invest in you, not just the idea.

A David S. Rose remix
The slides below are a remix of tips and advice from David S. Rose's presentations on how to pitch to a VC for money. These slides are not designed to be a stand-alone presentation. The design of the slides is experimental and are not the actual slides used by David S. Rose in his presentations to entrepreneurs (though content is essentially the same). Do not adjust your computer — the display type (Carbontype) is suppose to look that way (whether that is good or bad — effective or lame — is another issue all together). I used this deck to review key points with a business class after we watched the TED video. In that context, the visuals worked well (there was also a handout...of course). See the slides below or on Slideshare.

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: vc zen)

Explaining what your company is all about in under three minutes
Among many other things (when does this guy sleep?), David is the founder and CEO of Angelsoft. This short slide-like presentation below does a very good job of answering the question: What the heck is Angelsoft and why should I care? The video appears at the top of the Angelsoft website.


Angelsoft 3.0 Introduction Video from Angelsoft on Vimeo.

Comments

[Jon Thomas]

Awesome presentation. I think the typeface works - very different from most seen in PowerPoints, and it's big enough to make up for the "bleed" within the letters.

TED scores again with another interesting topic and presentation.

[Spammer Charlotte Ritter]

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Thanks

[Jan Schultink]

Thank you for leading me to this video.

One thing to add: David is an example of how it is possible to speak at very, very high speed and be fully understood.

[Thomas]

Very very interesting.

One question: which company makes the short slide-like presentation video? It's brillant.
(

[Matt Edmundson]

A friend of mine has just done an unusual pitch. I thought it was very well done - she wants people to invest in her music and made it real easy to understand how:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpGgwuGqtNM

The only thing wrong with this - the link to her site is not working! Lesson - it doesn't matter how great the presentation - check the detail!

The website: http://www.thisislindsey.com/