How to Pitch Investors
Ben Milne, CEO of Greater Des Moines (DSM) startup Dwolla, explains the importance of knowing how to pitch investors to raise venture capital.
Choosing the Right Investors to Pitch
How do you know the right investors to pitch? Ben is of the mindset that investors can not only offer your startup funding support, but experience as well. By finding the right investors to pitch and connecting with active industry professionals, a startup can reach its capital goals quickly and efficiently.
Tips on Creating a Pitch for Your Startup
Your startup can benefit from these pitch tips:
- Know your product inside and out. Know every way a customer could benefit from what you’ve created. This product knowledge will instill confidence in your potential investors that what you’ve come up with will lead to more sales.
- Know your target market. What do your customer demographics look like? This will help you focus your marketing and product production. Defining the target market allows you to sell the right way, whether that’s through traditional marketing like postcards or radio ads or online advertising through websites and social media.
- Learn the right verbiage:
- What is dilution? Knowing that dilution decreases your ownership stake in your startup is valuable information.
- What is valuation? Understanding how to show what your startup is worth – whether through the Berkus Method or another method – is an art.
- What is a cap table? Once you know terms like dilution and valuation, you can use them to create a cap table, or analysis of who owns what in your startup.