Surbhi Sarna, CEO of nVision, explains how founders should pitch to investors. Weave in why you personally care about the problem so investors believe you won't quit. Skip the rehearsed sales pitch; investors sense when passion is real. Cover market size, positioning, timeline, and a path to profitability.
Chapters
They're going to pitch next Wednesday. Okay. Any advice for them before they go in? Outside— so one thing that Tim told me, which really made me change the entire way that I pitch and I present, I didn't— when I pitched to Tim and when I pitched for my entire seed round, I didn't start with my personal story or I didn't tell my personal story at all. So, I never said, I was a patient, this made me want to change this part of healthcare, any of that. So, one thing— so, Tim talked to me about that, pulled me aside and said, part of the reason investor believes that you're not getting off this ship, you're going to go down with it, is because they know that you have this personal connection with the company. So, as much as you can paint a story around why you're doing what you're doing, If it doesn't sound like— and then Tim did this great— does Tim still do the thing where he has companies pitch him in front of everyone? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So a couple of my other investors and venture partners have had me do that with them, either to help analyze their companies or just for my own benefit. So one thing is like the less random it seems to the investors that you're working on this, the better it is. So the more you can tie in what your background is and why you came up with it. Even my husband, he is running an HR enterprise software startup now. He didn't have a personal— he didn't have a story like I did, but before starting this company, he'd managed 70 people. Right. He kind of, as he pitches, he relates, okay, so I was managing these people, and as the organization grew, it became harder and harder to get across certain points, and that's why I thought of this software and how much easier it would be to manage. Sure. So whatever it is, health or education or anything else, the more you can relate it, the better. I think first, Just to be completely honest with yourself and with the investors you're speaking with. I think that people have, even if you don't know it, I think even if people don't recognize it, you kind of have a sense of when someone's being very genuine with you and when someone's like pulling your leg, especially investors who kind of like do this for a living. Of course, every once in a while there's a bad investment, right? But— And the second part of The business aspect of it is something that I— I very much believe that I'm running a business. If I wasn't, I would have started a nonprofit. And I think that through business, you can make a very large impact. So again, when I say become an expert on your topic, that doesn't mean just in— that means in the business sense as well. Who are our strategics? How big is this market? How much of the market do we think we can capture? Who are the people we need to do that? Right. And people can kind of tell if you are business savvy through the way that you speak about the idea and the timelines and the fundraising and the valuations that will happen. And so again, I think there's 2 things. One is having your vision. One is portraying your vision in a way that people can digest. I try to remember that no matter who I'm speaking to, if it's an investor, if it's an advisor, if it's someone I'm trying to hire, if it's the FDA, like at the end of the day, even the FDA just consists of people, you know, so what people really enjoy and what people can relate to in a way that's like easy to digest is a story. Like when they can believe in your story, they can follow your story, it just grabs them more than listing a bunch of facts, you know, like the worst pitches are just like, Oh my gosh, they have no transitions between slides. People can't follow that. If you make people feel like you're sitting in a school lecture, we all know what that's like. It's really difficult to follow along. But if it's like a story and then one thing leads to another and, hey, this is why the timing of this product is so perfect right now. It's because all of these other market factors are going on. Do you see how this one person from the team will come in and take this aspect? Like all of that. Is there a video of my pitch, like my 3-minute pitch somewhere? I can't remember. I don't think so. I think it's closed. Yeah, so like kind of bringing all of those elements in in a way that's educated but tells a story, right? You have to have both. Like you can't just, like you said, like have a sob story and expect people to give you millions of dollars. Like that's not going to happen. No one's going to do that. Like they might as well just go invest in the nonprofits they're already investing in. So to actually have someone believe that you're going to be a profitable company and a profitable CEO that's gonna have return on people's shares, you have to understand your operating plan. And I love communicating that through written word. So I think that's one thing that's a little bit different than a lot of tech entrepreneurs. So whenever someone asks you a question, if you give the answer verbally, they know that you could have made that up on the fly. If you have a slide for every question they're gonna ask, they know you've thought about that shit. Probably a lot more than they have. And because it's really well-defined, it's really detailed, and like you go there and you talk through it, you know, so. What's the most important thing you've learned from your experience?
