Evan Carmichael breaks down what investors need to hear: a grandma-level company story, market size, competitor analysis, and a three-year financial model. Have your product demo ready (30 seconds to 2 minutes), know your pitch without reading slides, and adapt to each investor's philosophy.
Chapters
B. McQueen is writing to say, what should I have available with me when I meet with an investor?
I think, yeah, obviously a great company story that you're really proud of, number one, that you could explain to your grandma. You should have stuff about the market, market opportunity. You should have stuff about competitors, if there's people out there already doing what you plan to do. And why you're different. You know, key thing is what do you do, who you serve, and why you're different. And you should have the financial model. Certainly, you know, you don't have to do a kind of 25-year plan, but you should certainly have a sketched-out view of the 3-year plan and pretty good detail around this fiscal year and how you're going to deploy the investment that they're going to make and why, you know, back to Evan's first point really, where are you going to invest that to really accelerate the growth of the business? How are you going to deploy it? And if they get into, you know, if I was in my angel days and they were raising a couple of million dollars, I'd say, well, tell me where you're going to invest it. You must have a pretty good idea of that. What's your marketing plan look like? What's your geographic expansion? What are you going to invest in digital marketing? All these sort of things. So you need a pretty clear idea because you're running the business. They're going to trust you as the management team. And you've got to have the confidence and the plans in place to appear very credible.
Yeah, I love it. I mean, there's a number of resources on what needs to go into a business plan. There's a lot of the common stuff. I don't know if there's anything that you guys offer on Sage on the website or a blog post somewhere that outlines the details, but most business plans are pretty standard. And there's a reason why all those sections are in, right? There's a reason why you need to have the executive summary and the financials and the management team, the operations plan, and the sales and marketing strategy. All that stuff is is information that you as a business owner should know to run a business and also investors will be interested in. I think the most important thing when you're going to a meeting with somebody is to be able to talk to the business plan but not basically read it. Where a lot of the pitches that I saw, the entrepreneur comes in and they're like, okay, here we go, let's talk about my sales and marketing plan, and they're like having always to refer back to their notes. It's like, well, if I wanted to read what was on there, I could just take it and read it myself. I'm interested in having a conversation. So you should be willing and able to talk to the points in your business plan without having to look through and memorize it. I think that's super important. Also, I would use my ears. Like any good salesperson, you got to use your ears. Every investor has their own way of— their own investment philosophy, their own way of attacking things. And often we get locked into this is my sales pitch and you don't deviate from that, where they may not care about 5 of the things in your sales page. And so let them ask questions of you and answer them openly, honestly, and give them more context where they want that context.
Hey Evan, one other thing. If you're going to go and do pitches, it's almost like going for a job. In reality, you got, anybody believes, between 30 seconds and 2 minutes to really grab their attention and come, you know, jumping out of their seats saying, I've got to have part of this. So if you're a product company, the best way to do that is show them the thing you're really proud about, the product. Just get your product out and show them. And again, just be sensible. I don't know if your product needs Wi-Fi, check all the Wi-Fi works, test drive everything so that when you get in there and it's showtime, it's a showtime they really remember for the right reasons. So if you could give them like a 2-minute, 3-minute product demo, say, start at the end, this is why we're different, you'll have grabbed their attention and then everything else will follow from that, rather than just do the kind of standard pitch of turning up and talking about management team and market and all that sort of standard stuff. So grab them around why you're so excited and why you believe in your product. I think it's a great way to go.
Yeah, I love that point. If you can visualize what's happening, if you could do some kind of visual demo, I remember reading about the guy who popularized the bulletproof vest. He would go to police stations and tell the officer to shoot him in the chest. And of course he didn't, it didn't go through, and that won them over. Just right there, that one act landed a whole bunch of deals for them. And so if you have a product that can be demonstrated, then you absolutely want to bring that, because it's something different, memorable. If it's a food product, something that can be tasted, right? Anything that you can show that's more than just reading off of paper or PowerPoint slide helps make you stand out from the competition.
Yeah, the only other thing, if you're in the growth phase, if you've got real customers, customers are great on this. Say to customers, can you send me a video, 30-second clip of what, why you love my product and why we're different and which competitors you looked at and literally build a visual presentation. And the best thing is show them the product yourself. Bullet point vest is a great proof point. But secondly, if you haven't got that, you could stand out through customers. So if, you know, all these investors will say, wow, customers like that, love your product, this is real.
