confronting the elevator - george mason university › syst490 › elevatorspeech... · confronting...

Confronting

the Elevator THE STORY YOU HAVE TO GET

RIGHT BEFORE YOU CAN WRITE

THE STORY OF YOUR COMPANY

Don’t be this guy

Know

Your

Audience

WHAT KEEPS AN

INVESTOR IN THEIR

SEATS?

What’s on an Investor’s

Mind?

Four investor thought patterns that are essential to

understanding a Solution Pitch

Business Model

Fear vs. Greed

Managing Risk

Exit Arithmetic

The Dan Gordon School of Pitching

Investors & the Business

Model

Do they care about your product?

No so much as the customers wanting to buy it

Do they care about the problem?

More how you make money solving a it

Investors care (a lot!) about your business

model

The Dan Gordon School of Pitching

Fear and Greed

Fear: “they will lose my money”

Suspicion and delay are the BFFs of Fear

Greed: “I will miss out on making a killing”

Manic Haste is the BFF of Greed

The Dan Gordon School of Pitching

What is an elevator pitch?

A Story about your Business

in a 30 sec package

Facebook’s Original Media Kit

What Makes a Story

Good?

Engaging characters

Good plot

Exciting action

Climactic finish that wins the audience

Engaging

Characters CLEARLY DEFINED,

INTERESTING AND

MEMORABLE

Who is this Person?

Buildings don’t

buy, people do!

What’s their

problem?

Why should we

care?

What is this customer’s story?

What about this customer?

If the customer is not clearly and

specifically defined how can the

rest of the story work?

Good Plot YOUR ELEVATOR PITCH NEEDS A ARC JUST LIKE YOUR

FAVORITE MOVIE…JUST A LOT SHORTER

Business Thesis: Your Plot

• Customer Statement: “Our company helps [specify people]…”

• Problem statement: “who have [specific problem or aspiration]”

• Solution Statement: “by providing…”

• Value proposition statement: “resulting in…”

• Unique market position statement: “better than [current alternative and why and by how much]…”

• And here’s how we make money!

Learn to complete this sentence in 30 seconds and you might have a business!

Problem Statement: a TRUE Story

Tangible

Relevant

Urgent

Easily stated Airbnb Problem Statement

The Solution

Statement

Simple, conceptual understanding

Talk about the specific weakness with the current solution

Not about your technology or product…only do this if they ask and then keep it short

Solution Statement is What

You Do

“We eliminate the bottleneck in…”

“Whitens teeth, freshens breadth”

“We create highly controlled micro

environments for cellular mutation analysis”

Not how you do it!

Value Statement

Customers don’t buy products or services

They buy the benefits the product or

service provides

Investors want to buy value creation not

product development

The Value

Statement

Tangible

Measurable

Directly Relevant to customer pain/gain

Airbnb

Strong value propositions

You can’t go wrong with “better, cheaper and faster”

Unique Positioning Statement

No one has “no

competitors”

Focus on clear

differences that create

value

Limit the number to

increase the impact

The Big

Finish GIVE THE AUDIENCE

WHAT IT WANTS

What gets investors

excited?

The business model works

Validated the model and initial sales traction

The market is big and growing

There’s a big exit in your future

If you can’t make money on one

transaction, how do you make it

on a million?

The Business Model

Some Potential Things to

Mention

“Average order size of X”

“Lifetime customer value of $Y over Z years”

“Low upfront investment, long-tail revenue stream”

“Gross margins in excess of industry standards”

What’s Your “Ask”?

You Can What you Want, ‘Till

You Know What you Want

Getting a meeting is the goal

Who should I contact?

Is there firm the right one?

If not who they advise you speak with

If you get the

meeting… PREPARING THE FULL-LENGTH VERSION FROM THE

PREVIEW

The Five Things Investors

Have to See

Validated business model

Team that can deliver

MVP

Early sales traction and a pipeline

Partnerships for early scale

How to seal the deal

Realistic and attractive financial projections

Exit that’s attractive and reasonable

A team that can deliver

Investment “ask” that’s sensible

Things to mention

Who is the logical acquirer?

What do the sales metrics look like in your

space?

How much money will you ultimately need?

What’s the timeframe?

Simple and easy to read

Focus on key metrics vs. detailed P&L

Clean graphics can help make the point

The longer the timeline, the less believable

Financial Slides

Give them confidence you can deliver

Team Slide

Investment Slide

How much do you need?

How far does the money get you?

How will you spend it?

Valuation or other deal terms not required

Exit Slide

How will you exit?

If acquisition, who are the likely acquirers?

Timeframe?

Some other quick tips

Don’t do an ugly deck!

Organize presentation to best tell your story

Never forget that you’re a performer

Remember why you’re there. Stay on message