The Business Pitch I - The Contents

During the I Campinas TECH Meetup - Investments, all the entrepreneurs looking for investments will have the chance to pitch their business to several investors. A good pitch is a kind of art, but we will try to give you some tips until July, 7.

Firstly, let's start with the basics: what should you include in your pitch? What subject matters should you cover when talking with an investor about your business or idea?

Personally, I like that "10 slides" approach, which includes the following topics:

1. Title

Include the organization name, your name, your title and your contact info (if you are pitching without a presentation, let them know it explaining and giving your business card).

2. Problem

Make the problem you are solving clear. What is your goal?

If you are not solving a real problem, perceived by your customers, you will probably have big problems to succeed...

3. Solution

Explain clearly how you are solving the problem: what is your product and your value proposition?

4. Business Model

Explain how are you going to make money.

Who pays you? Don't forget your demographics, your targeted customers.

Which are your channels of distribution? How will you deliver your product? Web, retailers, sales representative ...?

And your gross margin?

5. Magic Sauce

What is the magic sauce behind your product or service? What makes you unique compared to your competitors?

6. Marketing & Sales

Answer how are you going to reach your customers, what is your go to market strategy?

Understand and explain the whole customer buying cycle involved and how much it costs.

Make clear what is your market. An approach is think about 3 categories:

1. Existing Market

In this case, the faster, the better and you are usually targeting a high end market segment.

2. Resegmented Market 

In this case, you have to basic approaches:

- Niche, which is marketing and branding driven

- Cheaper, targeting the low end

3. New Market

A cheaper & good enough approach can create a new class of product or customer.

7. Competition

Give a complete view of your competition and how you can outsmart it.

8. Team

Tell about the management team, the founders of your company. 

If you already have, don't forget to mention about your Board of Directors, Board of Advisors and your major investors.

9. Financial Projections

Your 5-yr projection must include: revenue, cost, profit, number of customers and conversion rate. Just your projection of customers and/or revenue is not good enough ...

10. Current Status/Timeline

Explain your current status, your near future and how you intend to use the seed money.

During the event you will have 3 minutes to explain the whole idea. Think about those topics and how you can show those elements in this time frame in a very concise and catchy way.

In the next posts will add more applied tips and fun examples! 

P.S.: This post was based in one of Edith Yeung's Entrepreneurship lectures that I've attended at UC Berkeley.