When you’re building your dream startup, you probably have the perfect vision in your mind of what it will ultimately look like. The problem is that translating that vision so that others understand what you’re looking to achieve can be significantly more difficult. This is where the way you present your business will be key.
Why does the presentation matter?
According to venture capitalists, a startup’s presentation is 80% of getting the idea through the door.
If you’ve managed to snag a meeting with a potential investor, they want to be shown something visually arresting and aware. It doesn’t matter how passionate the business owner is. If your presentation doesn’t capture your potential investor’s attention, it won’t matter how well you explain the plan behind it.
Your time is limited.
Investors and venture capitalists are inundated with requests from businesses looking for seed capital or financing for growth. This means that the time you have when you can catch your potential investor’s eye is minimal. You may be competing with dozens of other startups with ideas just as good as yours, so making your pitch and presentation count is key.
Keep it concise and know exactly what you plan on saying. Be clear with the benefits your potential investor could see and get your big ideas on the table in the first 30 seconds.
Choose your type of presentation.
There are a few key types of presentations you can offer a prospective investor. Let’s go over a few of them:
Informative Presentations
These presentations take an analytical approach to your business’s information. This type of presentation looks to present your prospective investors with your specific goals and function and relies heavily on status reports and summaries.
Persuasive Presentations
This type of presentation outlines your organization’s goals and then follows it up with what stage you’re at with your progress. You’re looking to keep your listeners engaged and open to ideas, so start with big ideas first.
Group Presentations
Rarely do big events happen with just one person at the helm. Doing a group presentation is a great way to introduce potential investors to the team and help them see all the people who brought the vision to life.
Don’t get killed by PowerPoint.
To create a persuasive presentation, you will need to go bigger than the traditional slide deck. While some people can create interesting and dynamic PowerPoint presentations, many more people use them as a crutch when they’re not comfortable presenting on their own.
To avoid this, think about your own strengths. What are you good at when it comes to presentations, and what will allow you to build off that? Consider alternate presentation aids, like video presentations, which might be able to give you more punch with investors. Not comfortable with creating videos? Video production Melbourne can help your startup get ahead by crafting the ideal video for your presentation.
Ideally, what you’re looking to do is showcase the idea that’s brought you so much passion in a way that it translates to investors and gives them something to be passionate about as well—and maybe, if you’re lucky, some money too.
