Practical Tips on How to Optimize Your Pitch

An article we liked from Thought Leader James Hottensen of Capbase:

The Do's and Don'ts of Investors Pitches

How to Pitch Your Idea to Investors

Pitching your idea can be one of the most nerve-wracking things you can do as a founder. Even founders who have experience in public speaking get nervous, and for a good reason: it’s like a job interview on steroids. Not only is your idea being judged critically, but you are also being judged as an individual.

In this article, we draw from current investors and founders to show what not to do and provide constructive tips to optimize your pitch.

Mistakes to Avoid When Pitching Investors

Worrying too much about styling and not about communicating the idea carefully enough.

While your deck needs to look professional, you should not feel pressure to win over investors based on the deck alone. There are great tools out there like Pitch.com, which takes care of the styling for you. The most important thing is that your idea is clearly communicated and your team is well represented. Henry McNamara, a Partner at Great Oaks Venture Capital, says, “I think people over-emphasize the need to have a beautifully designed deck. Many of the best companies we've backed at seed had primitive decks that clearly and concisely laid out the vision. I am sometimes skeptical when too many resources have gone into a deck to be beautiful. A great team and concept don't need much window dressing.”

Relying on a script

You need to be able to improvise. VC’s like to hear themselves talk, so you can almost guarantee that they will interrupt you at some point with a question. Your pitch should be practiced enough so that you can improvise and get back on track. When you can improvise and act naturally, you appear more confident as a leader. We cover how to get more comfortable with your pitch later in the article.

Overestimating or mischaracterizing the TAM (total addressable market)

One of the least persuasive points to make is, “The size of our market is X; if we get Y%, we will do Z in sales.

Dreamit Ventures adds:

“The biggest mistake we see with regard to TAM is when founders uses outside data to find the market size and then, usually somewhat arbitrarily, predicts that the startup will achieve a piece of that invariably massive pie. “

To be blunt, most TAM estimates are wrong. They are done by...