Pitching To Investors? Do It Like A Pro With This Guide.
Fake it till you be it. — Souha Arbi
The fourth session of our 3rd Bootcamp was held by Souha Arbi the marketing expert of the fintech startup Kaoun on the topic of “Pitching”.
Starting your own business and pitching to investors, VCs, and customers or even pitching your ideas to your team can be challenging especially if you’re working on boosting your confidence along the way which we all can relate to.
Here’s a tip: “Pitch like you know what you’re talking about”
When you first hear this, a question might pop up: “Do I not need to?”. Well, absolutely you do, that’s the first step: Getting to know your idea and organizing it or else no one would listen to a messy speech. After figuring that out, it is important to structure your pitch. Here is a guideline for the important slides that you need to include and if you want to learn more about pitching, practice it and master it you can use this form to apply for our upcoming bootcamps :
1. Elevator pitch or hook or tagline (you can add a teaser image).
2. Problem: present the problem you are solving and why your startup should exist.
3. Solution: present your solution and show them how it works simply and clearly.
4. Market size: Highlight the need in the market and the frequency of the problem.
5.Business model: show your audience how you’re going to make your solution profitable and generate money.
6. Special tech: talk about your added value and the core advantages that make your solution stand out.
7.Competition: It doesn’t have to be a product, company, or person. Competition can be an idea, behavior, or habit. You always have competition. Never say that you don’t!
8.Marketing plan: simply explain your marketing strategy.
9. Team: talk about who you are and what you do. Your audience is mainly interested in knowing if you have an expert in the field you’re working on among the team or advisors.
10. Milestones: present how you anticipate the evolution of your product or your future expansions. Be real and reasonable!
Making a killer pitch goes beyond following this structure. Here we gathered some advice given by our expert:
- First impressions matter → Try to make a good one.
- Know your audience: their background, language, interests, and journey. → Run background checks if needed.
- This isn’t a 5th-grade recitation. → Engage your audience through a story, let them live, and keep it human.
- Use feelings to gather their attention. → Mix joy, surprise, and fear.
- Embrace your weaknesses, your own or your product’s, because they will see through it anyway.
- Show them that you are worth investing in. You might fail as a product, but you should never fail as a person.
- Data, data, DATA. → Back your facts with data, don’t talk about raw information and make it credible.
- End strong. → Give them something to walk away with.
To conclude, an important skill to master as an entrepreneur is learning how to present and explaining your ideas to people that need to hear them. Pitching has three main aims: selling; be it a product, vision, mission, team, or simply an idea, convincing, and engaging people.
Through this article, we presented several tips to nail your pitch, but to build any skill what you need the most is practice! For more practice and one to one coaching consider applying to our upcoming Bootcamps through this form.
This article was written by Ghaya khamassi — Skills21 alumna.
