Who are the founders and key team members?

What are investors really asking?

How is the team going to scale and how will the members be useful? Do you understand the realities of startups? Has the team worked together before?

Early stage investing is about the idea and the people. Angel investors understand the product will evolve during beta. So what they are really investing in is the team. That’s why investors want to know the backgrounds of the founders. After all, you are the guiding force for your company. So, it makes sense that investors want to know with whom they are jumping into bed.

What investors want to hear.

If you have people on staff, they’ll want to know who, why you hired those people, and who else you need to bring on-board to execute on your plan. Give them a sense of what a fully formed team looks like at this stage and how quickly you expect to grow the team over time.

Start-ups are hard. Taking risk is daunting. It isn’t for everyone. Investors understand this. So with this question, investors are also trying to tease out of you:

• Are you the type of person who will you stick around for the long-term or jump ship at the first sign of trouble?
• Are you a one-man-show or a fully formed team?
• If you’re a team, have you been together for 5 weeks or 5 years? Do you have complementary skills? Do you work well together? Do you get on well together?
• What type of personalities are on the team? Have you assembled a team full of idea people, or are there people who can execute on a plan? Will the team be able to handle the next phase of growth? Can they manage the realties of a 30-person team?

So remember, you’re selling you, you team, and its resilience.

Let’s look at two approaches to answering this question.

Bad Answer: I’m a first time entrepreneur and the creator of Startup ABC. Our team consists of independent coders based in India and my childhood friend, Sally, who handles marketing. Sally is a former teacher and she’s responsible for online marketing. (Side note: From this answer, investors hear that interpersonal relationships are more important to you than hiring the skills needed to turn your product or service into a scalable business.)

Good Answer: Kevin is a serial entrepreneur and the creator of Startup XYZ. He brings the innovation, technology, and online marketing know-how. Kim is our co-founder and CEO. She a former finance executive who worked for a Big 4 firm and publicly traded, global companies. Kim is responsible for the business side of things and B2B sales. Sarah is responsible for user experience, tech design, and consumer marketing. She works with us part-time and will be our first hire. Our independent coders are based in Baltimore. But we’ve identified a local coder to start working with once we close our round.

Best Practice: When talking about the team, it’s best to highlight the things from the “Good Answer” at various points during the pitch. That way, when you arrive at the Team slide 15 minutes into your pitch, investors will be familiar with the key players and can quickly understand the value they bring to the team.

More on Serial Entrepreneurs: Investors will want to understand your previous experience in more detail. Were you successful and sold your company for millions, or did you shut down within the first year?

Here’s how we’d expand on Kevin’s entrepreneurial experience: Kevin was the co-founder of Urban Posters. Under his leadership, Urban Posters grew from a start-up idea to one of the top 5 online poster & print retailers in the U.S. and expanded offline to a brick & mortars storefront in Baltimore, Maryland. The Baltimore store quickly ranked as the top framing shop (in terms of volume) in the state of Maryland.

Good luck pitching!