For any Start up, there is a need to build a great pitch and make it effective. Here are the most typical topics you should cover in your first short pitch, where the goal simply is to have a change in the next step.
The problem
The solution
The market
The plan to reach the market (inc. your team’s knowledge base)
Proposed Deal
If you think about this in “PowerPoint format”, in your elevator pitch (3-5 min), you should not have more than 5 points per slide with max 7 rows of text. The idea is that you only hit the highlights and make your audience “want to hear/read the details” = your goal.
Here’s few pointers by Carmine Gallo about the Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs.
first set the theme
outline your presentation and make it clear when you have covered one thing before moving on to the next one
BE excited. If you are not, why would the audience be?
Now that the long awaited core model is out, we are working on collecting questions and feedback from various blogs, emails etc. and are going to write longer and more detailed post to answer all of the important questions, but just briefly wanted to share this one question I just replied via email.
I’d like to ask you at what level should be a Start up proposal? I mean, an entrepreneur should present a complete business plan or can present just an innovative idea too?
My reply:
It can be at in any stage that you want, but it will need to be web or mobile focused business idea/model. However it’s good to understand that typically very early stage ideas are not so interesting “as investment”, but then again that “typically” comes more from the “old models of investing” and to be honest we have no idea what will become “typical” in our service, because that depends on the users.
Also note that all information you post into your startup profile in our service, is visible to all paid members (and early beta registrants that have their active role/profile), so I suggest you to read this post related on “idea level”
This will be very interesting to see, if entrepreneurs as “investors” will be different than “traditional investors”.
It’s been a big push to get this concept build and thanks to our great team it’s now out. It feels so great to finally have it out in the real markets and get real feedback. Now we can finally start to be fully open about our service and can continue to develop our service openly with you.
There is a lot to do and we are just getting started with all of this, so please share your feedback and questions in comments so we can get the dialog going here
BIG thanks for each and every one of you for being part of this exiting journey with us!
As part of our software update today, we are excited to announce our affiliate model. The affiliate concept itself is no different to other affiliate marketing programs out there, but what makes our model unique is the way rewards can be calculated in our platform and the opportunities that can come with that.
Grow VC affiliate model details:
affiliate URL is used in a tweet or blog post that mentions Grow VC service
startup founder finds Grow VC service via affiliates link and decides to register to our service
later, founder decides to subscribe for startup profile in Grow VC to get funded
startup becomes fully funded and goes after their market
startup is successful and generates profit for investment they got from Grow VC (ROI),
affiliate who’s link was used for startup to find Grow VC, is paid 1% of the Grow VC’s ownership ROI
This 1% is only calculated from the return on investment that Grow VC may get for it’s ownership and NOT from any other investments that may occur by other parties. That 1% from our investment profits may not sound like much, but think about being the affiliate in the next Google or Facebook and there is no limit on how many startups you an have linked to your affiliate ID.
As you can see from the details above, after we have launched our full featured service, Grow VC will also start doing direct investments to most interesting startups in the service. Full details will be announced on the 15th of this month.
How to get your affiliate URL
All you need to do is sign in (or register for your free account first, if you don’t have account yet). After signing in, go to your “account” -page (previously “settings”) and look for affiliate link section, on top of the right column, where you will be able to activate your personal URL and also see statistics of your affiliate URL’s usage. Details like how many times your link have been clicked and how many cookies have been served.
Any new user that clicks to your affiliate link, will come to Grow VC main page and is given a cookie that include your unique affiliate ID. If the visitor chooses to register to our service, their registration ID is then linked to your affiliate ID, and if that person then subscribes to create a startup profile, again their startup ID is linked to your affiliate ID.
Later on, we will list all of the startups that are connected to your affiliate ID in your “account” -page, under affiliate statistics, so that you know what startups have found their way to Grow VC using your affiliate link.
Using your affiliate link
You can use your affiliate link in your personal emails, twitter tweets, blog post, etc. when you mention Grow VC, but using it for spamming people in any way, is totally prohibited. In case of misuse, your affiliate ID will be suspended and all of your affiliate details will be removed, resulting the loss of previously earned connections.
We all now know officially that Apple launched iPad. It is an interesting new concept between mobile phones and laptops. And definitely it will have and need a lot of applications to be successful. We saw already some games, books, and newspapers that are available.
The next step is to get developers to make much more apps. Paul Grim, a General Partner at venture capital firm SunBridge Partners, commented the apps business from the traditional VC point of view in Venturebeat’s article, An investor’s take on the iPad — how to parse the hype. In this article Paul Grim says:
“Although I do believe there will be many successful apps on the iPad, I don’t believe they are generally venture-backed material. As with most of the iPhone apps, this will be a hits-driven business with little capital intensity; most of the successes will likely be angel or self-funded.”
This is the same point Grow VC has emphasized many times (like yesterday). We have actually divided the mobile startups now into two main categories (there are of course much more segments inside these categories):
Hardware and more demanding technical platform startups
Application startups
The first category includes companies that have been funded by traditional VC’s. But many of those firms also need seed funding before a VC round. The second category is not really for the traditional VC’s. But it doesn’t mean that they are not good business opportunities. But the capital structure and risk profile is different from VC’s targets. They can start with small money, and it is not technology risk, but much more market risk, i.e. can they really get loyal users.
This is one reason, why new models for seed and startup funding are needed. And we believe Grow VC’s concepts, which we have now in beta and especially new ones we launch in this year, will offer a new way to fund these companies.
2010 will be an interesting year. If VC investments go back up to $25bn to $30bn per year, then the diet didn’t stick and we are back to an overfunded industry that will produce subpar returns on average.
If, on the other hand, the new normal is $15bn to $20bn per year, then the diet worked and we’ve scaled back the business to healthy levels.
This comment relates to he’s earlier post about the “Venture Capital Math Problem“, where he explains about the problem that – too much money will make the whole VC industry to under perform.
As this is one of the reasons we have started Grow VC, I wanted to point out that things are not the same everywhere. So here’s my take on the topic:
I think this is similar problem than it is with food. In some western countries there is too much food and problems that are associated with that, like obesity. Yet in many parts of the world, people are starving.
So if some markets in the world have too much money in VC, it does not mean there is too much money overall, it’s just wrongly distributed. I do understand that, there are also problems with having too much money per sector, so that nobody is getting good results, but that too is wrong distribution.
Early VC money should always be going towards new innovation and not to be “me too in the popular segment” – there are plenty of problems in the world for entrepreneurs to solve & VC’s to be successful.
There is a big gap between what Kiva.org is doing and with these problems of having too much money in venture capital in some regions. For us this shows that there needs to be much better distribution, more transparency and more activity in this segment overall – and this is exactly where we are focusing our efforts.
I think this just shows that money does not solve problems. The problem here is not too much money, but how it’s now distributed.
VC industry is starting to look like the newspaper industry – better to wake up, the blogs are coming…
Fred:
What are the blogs of the VC business?Things like Y Combinator are great but they are feeding us even more opportunities so I see them as additive, Although I also see blogs as additive for the newspaper business if they’d just see themselves as curators and aggregators instead of content creators
Me:
I guess the closest thing to “blogs of VC industry” today are angel investors. But that’s for today. Also Y-combinator and the likes are great too and could be considered as “blogs of VC industry”. However their “next step” need to change away from just VC’s.
The fundamental change will become, when there are “platforms” for anyone to start a “blog for VC industry” and that’s what we are doing in www.growvc.com.
Overall, we feel that in long term the money will be spread to more potential start-ups and more of them will not go via IPO but just buy back of shares, mergers etc. with lower ROI. But that’s OK if the time for ROI is shorter and cost of management is lower.
So – be more direct, spread wider, lower the management cost, speed up the ROI cycle and you can accept lower ROI.
If you think about the structure of today, from where the VC money really comes from, you start to see the “big picture”. – basically it means that individuals like you and me pay for pensions funds etc. and these funds then invest to VC funds. VC’s then make investment decisions and “manage” the investments, all the way to take it public (hopefully). Basically just to sell it back to us…
When more people will start to understand this cycle because of more info and transparency online (if they are interested), people will not accept this structure. Because in the long run what matter is, if the companies in question sell what matters. And that is not a question of size.
Fred:
Got it
I hope this works
It would scale much better
Related to this topic, below is a very interesting speech given by Fred Wilson at talks@google. You need to spare an hour to look the whole video, but I feel it’s well worth it. Just have some popcorn & coke and relax.
What makes it interesting to me, is that those industries that are going to be disrupted by internet in the future, currently have same issues what Venture Capital does, yet for some reason those would not apply to VC industry.
Today we are at the Finance for Mobile and Internet Businesses event, that we organized together with the South East England Development Agency for promising start-ups and investors. This is just one of the examples of how we develop our cooperation with the local organizations that are helping start-ups grow.
Some of the main topics in our presentation today are:
Developing Global Internet Businesses – Challenges and opportunities
Web and mobile businesses: new retail business
Go-to-market
Challenges of funding market
Web and mobile services funding
Grow VC platform for Experts and funding – The first global concept
Grow VC launched the service investment concept in this week. Grow VC is first global platform for service investment or “sweat equity” opportunities – so experts and investors can invest in startups using man-hours in addition to dollars, and startups can offer partial ownership in return. In practice it means that a startup can look, for example, a lawyer or PR professional and offer ownership to him or her. And experts can offer they services for ownership.
Sweat equity is nothing new. It has been typical for startups to attract people to do some work and also for board and advisor roles and offer them company shares. - What is new and unique is to have a global place to find the most suitable experts for a company and the best companies for each expert. If I set up a company in the UK, I might need an expert in the US and India. I can now enter my company details to the Grow VC services and indicate that I look for an expert with a specified profile in the US and India, and offer them 1% ownership. And experts can find globally companies that look for their services.
This is important for early phase companies and especially important in the current economic downturn. It is also important to have an open match-making service for this, otherwise companies and experts know only opportunities from their own networks. And it doesn’t always mean optimal fit, if you just take someone you happen to know. Web and mobile companies are very global nowadays, and they must find the best resources globally.
This new feature is one important step for Grow VC to become the leading investment platform for startups globally. We continuously innovate new models for investments and funding. And in near future we can publish more new concepts. We also like to get your feedback and ideas. We are very interested to know, what kind of services could better help you to make investments or find funding.
For startup companies, raising your first dollar is the biggest challenge: everyone is hesitant to place the first bet on a new company. Luckily, there’s a range of people out there willing to help – from investment groups and consultants to well-connected friends and registered broker dealers. But even if you’ve enlisted help in your search for capital, on many level you’re still going to have to be involved in the fundraising process.
And all too often, in spite of an entrepreneur’s passion for their project, they aren’t psychologically prepared to “ask for money”.
That’s quite OK, entrepreneurs should never ask for money. They are selling a stake in a new opportunity. They are inviting people to be part of an exciting venture. And they have to practice their pitch until it’s as familiar and unforgettable to them as a sit-com’s theme song.
There are three psychological tricks that entrepreneurs can employ. First, collect “no’s.” Make it your mission to hear the word “no” as many times as you can. Set a daily goal of how many times you want to hear it. Second, tell everybody what you’re doing. If a bank teller, a UPS delivery person or a pharmacist asks “how are you doing?” don’t say “fine.” Tell them exactly how much money you’re raising for your new venture. Third, build a movement. Replace “How many shares can you buy?” with “How many people can you find who be right for this kind of investment?”
The key is to stop asking and start telling. We’ve seen these tips transform entrepreneurs time and again. And we’ve seen how investors respond positively to entrepreneurs who have overcome any fear of rejection when it comes to financing their startup.
A short while ago, our Chairman Jouko Ahvenainen did a interview for Knowledge Peers in UK. In this video Jouko shares his experience on working with advisers in start-up and how to get the best outcome for both parties.
Some of the topics include:
what should you be looking for when thinking of having advisers
what type of skills and experience you should be looking for
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The next step is to get developers to make much more apps. Paul Grim, a General Partner at venture capital firm SunBridge Partners, commented the apps business from the traditional VC point of view in Venturebeat’s article, ![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=421610fe-4a1d-4ee1-9422-bfa3502976a0)
– better to wake up, the blogs are coming…![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=c2ec79e5-2480-47cc-aeec-fdc81543eba2)
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