How to be in the top 1% of startups pitching to VCs and angels
Just show that you’ve done your research on the investor or fund, understand their focus and can explain how your startup fits their criteria: you are now in the top 1% of cold pitches that investor or fund will receive each year.
Doesn’t seem like rocket surgery, huh?
And yet it must be. It must be the product of the multiplication of brain surgery and rocket science to be this hard to understand. Because about 99% of the pitches most investors and funds receive show no indication that the person sending the pitch deck knows anything about the focus of the investor – the stage they typically invest at, the industries, technologies or business models they’re most interested in, the similar companies they have invested in previously, the board seats they hold, or the personal interests they have.
Angels can be a little under-the-radar but most funds spend quite a bit of time communicating this on their website, in the media, on social channels, and at events. And yet most of that investment in time and fancy design seems pointless, since 99% of the pitches they receive seem designed for shotgun distribution to all possible investors.
This is not a lottery
In that you don’t increase your chances of a win by buying more lottery tickets. At least, not as much as you do by learning about your target and what motivates them. You’re not asking them for $5, you’re asking for $500,000 or even $5 million. Nobody valuable responds to a shotgun approach when the price of a ticket is $500,000. Investors talk, and particularly about the idiots other investors should avoid. Because time is the most precious commodity in tech investing and nobody wants their peers and friends to have their time wasted.
Very few of them will call you an idiot to your face. Very few of them will say you have wasted their time. That’s not how business culture works in Australia. But you’ll find it very hard to escape that first impression you’ve set as a shotgun sprayer and you’ll your reputation will often precede you, meaning usually responsive funds and angels will be unresponsive or minimally responsive.
Find your call to action
This is not about finding a call to action that could work for all the investors in the world. It is about finding a call to action that will work for me. A call to action that will help me get my venture partner and my LPs onboard after you get me. And another different call to action that will work for each of the 3–5 other investors you’ll need to pull this round together.
I could never have enough capital under management to allow me to invest in every great startup I see. There have never been so many great startups and next year there will be even more great startups. The job of every investor is to be as sure as possible that they invest in the best. Not every. This is not a lottery.
But now you know how to get into the top 1%! (Shhh, don’t tell everybody else).
Just so we’re clear, I’m raising for M8 Ventures, a process which could take another year or two, and until I’m done, no more angel investing for me. I continue to meet with founders regularly, to help them if I can. This blog post is in no way inspired by any of the three founders I met today, in case you’re reading this. If I’ve met you, you are already in the top 1% and you didn’t get there by shotgunning your pitch.
