FutureSight’s Post

Founders, when pitching your idea to an investor or your users, sell the vision, and not the product! People buy into a transformation, not a list of features. Paint a picture of how profoundly you'll change their world, and your product details almost become secondary. This will often secure investors. Investors want to fund ideas that could disrupt a market or create meaningful change. A compelling vision is often more critical to them than immediate feature sets. Understand how investors think and get the 'yes' you need by joining the exclusive waitlist. Use the link in the comments for early access to get your copy of the book 'Decoding Investor Psychology'. #founder #investor #funding

Fell in love with a problem, racing to build your product, but have yet to fully figure out your business? Investment memos, a common technique for VCs, are an excellent tool for founders in the early stages (equally for repeat or first-time founders). Here's the simple structure we used for our deal memo at Back: 1. Opportunity 2. Mission 3. Problem + Solution 4. Market + Competition 5. GTM  6. Team 7. Financials 8. Deal In my experience, condensing this information helps clarify the opportunity, and framing it in a VC-friendly is a great way to fundraise faster. PS: The picture is from our longer internal research doc when we were doing customer research for the problem (mind the clunky name).

This is something that a lot of first time founders do. And it kills their chances with investors. Please don’t make your elevator pitch a list of your your features. Investors are interested in: - The problem you are solving. - Why this is the right time for your solution. - Why you are the right person/team to do this Features come, features go. They are rarely a reason to invest.

You are pitching to an investor? Don’t start with your idea. Start with your startup’s genesis story. Why does it work better? Because it’s unique and personal. Answer these questions: - Why tackle this problem? - How is it connected to you? - How do you know the industry? - How did your team come together? - What are you proud of so far? Your idea is not unique… …but the story is. It gives context. Helps people relate to you. How do you craft your story? What else do you include? Drop it in the comments or DM me.

Founders — how strong is your narrative around the problem you’re solving? Even if you're solving a problem that’s easy for investors to intuitively understand, you want to show how you got the validation that it’s something worth solving. Do you have a personal story or direct connection to the problem? Were you a part of the target market yourself, or are you in constant contact with them in your current position? Do you know from firsthand experience that there needs to be a solution? Demonstrate how you are uniquely qualified to understand the problem, then leverage numbers to show how you systematically approached customer and product validation. Have you done significant surveying or research with those customers? Have you talked with folks in the distribution channels that you’ll be involved with? Anecdotal stories and data points are nice — but you’ll be much more effective in your pitches if you can say that you interviewed 100 customers, stack-ranked their needs based on those interviews, and used that to build a product roadmap. This approach will earn you a lot of trust with investors. VCs are just like everyone else — they want to connect to people and their personal stories. When you share the background of the problem, adding in your own experience can be very powerful. Share your story, then help investors understand the true demand for your product.

One of the promises I make to founders is that I will read your update. If it hits my inbox -- whether or not we have invested -- I read it. One of my favorite investor updates to read focuses on the key questions or assumptions the founder is testing for the quarter. This is super helpful as an investor (especially investing at the pre-seed, where revenue may not be the most important part of the update) because it: 1) helps me understand how the founder thinks about building the business 2) gives me reference points over time to understand pace, focus, and execution of the team 3) lets me know how to be actually helpful All really important insights for opportunities in our pipeline and companies in our portfolio. ✨

Founder reminder: 95% of investor “no” s have zero to do with the quality of your idea. They have likely spent < 3 minutes and the opportunity doesn’t fit their “sweet spot” in some way. This can be incredibly frustrating to founders who are highly invested in their idea, I understand. Many VCs are also fairly opaque about what their “sweet spot” is, in part to keep the top of the funnel as wide open as possible. Don’t get frustrated. Keep researching and pitching. The right investor is out there !

Here is a good outline to follow if you have not raised funding. Above all, remember that culture is everything and if you make a wrong choice as to VC, the funding will not matter as you will not be able to execute per your liking!

Love this advice from Kat Weaver for startup founders. YOU and your MESSAGE should be so clear that a pitch deck is just the garnish. #startups #startupmarketing #marketingstretegy

Don’t start with your idea when talking to investors. Instead. Start with your startup’s genesis story. Why does it work better? Because it’s unique and personal. How do you do this? Answer these questions: - Why tackle this problem? - How is it connected to you? - What are you proud of so far? - How do you know the industry? - How did your team come together? Your idea is not unique… …but your story is. It gives context. Helps people relate to you. P.S. How do you craft your story? What else do you include? Let's discuss below. ⬇️