5 tips for nailing your next pitch

Have you recently put your best pencils or painting techniques to work and come up with a great idea that the world needs to know about but don't quite have the cash to get it off the ground? Crowd-funding can be a brilliant way to see your idea come to life but before you get the pennies, you need to nail the pitch. Follow these five top tips for ultimate success.

01. The idea

An entrepreneur should be able to explain their idea clearly, the problem they want to solve and how they would solve it. If the idea is too complicated or it's presented poorly, investors may misunderstand or skip over your project entirely.

02. The team

Particularly for early-stage startups, the team is the most important asset a company has. Potential investors want to know if the team has the experience and the passion to drive the business forward.

03. Videos

Just because investors are investing online doesn't mean that they don't want to "meet" entrepreneurs and their teams. Videos are a great way of conveying personality, passion, plans and letting investors see 'the whites of an entrepreneur's eyes'. It builds trust and without a video, it makes for a hard sell.

04. Monetisation strategy

While many businesses won't yet be generating revenues, investors like the entrepreneur to demonstrate an understanding of options for generating revenues and perhaps an idea for when they would expect to start doing this.

05. Company valuation

Investors are looking to invest in a great business, but they also want a fair deal in exchange for the risk they are undertaking. High valuations that are not justified make it less likely that investors will take part.

These tips originally featured in Computer Arts issue 234.

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