Written By: Marc Halpin
Don Valentine founded Sequoia Capital in 1972 and helped grow it into one of the most legendary investment firms in the world. Sequoia has gone on to back some of the most valuable companies in the world including Apple, Airbnb, Cisco, DoorDash, Google, Instagram, LinkedIn, Nvidia, PayPal, SpaceX, WhatsApp, YouTube, Zappos and many, many more.
Don famously said: The art of storytelling is critically important. Most of the entrepreneurs who come to us can’t tell a story. Learning to tell a story is incredibly important because that’s how the money works. The money flows as a function of the story.
It could be difficult to believe that some of the most valuable companies in the world got there (at least in part) by simply telling good stories. In fact as a Founder, it can be easy to downplay the importance of storytelling versus more pragmatic aspects of building a business and raising capital. Alas for those poor souls the venture checks are a little harder to come by, at least according to Don.
Here are 5 tips to enhance your storytelling skills while pitching investors.
- Build your pitch deck with these 12 slides only: Title, Highlights, Problem, Solution, Market Potential, Business Model, Go To Market, Competition, Team, Financials, Use of Funds, Why Now
- Have a great founding story that captures the imagination of your audience – It should underpin your ‘Founder market fit’ and relevant experience. This is the foundation of your story.
- Expect that your audience has no knowledge of your space so pitch as you would pitch a 6th grader. There are no points in this game for big words and industry acronyms. Keep it simple.
- Practice telling your story (pitching your business) in 10 minutes or less. Within reason the shorter and simpler your pitch is the better it will be.
- There’s a difference between explaining what your business is and why you and it are a good investment. You want to do the latter. The best way to do this is explain why current customers and future customers (will) love your product.
Do these five things and your chances of raising that $3M round you’ve been chasing will increase dramatically.
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