The 3 Step Process To Raising Seed Money For Your Startup

The 3 step process to raising money post your seed has

a) an overview step – usually at a demo day (3-5 min presentation) or via a warm introduction followed by

b) a first meeting (30 – 60 min) where your pitch deck showcases your company and business and finally

c) a follow on second meeting (60-90 min) with partners at the firm where you outline your operating plan

Your overview presentations’ goal is to pique interest in 5-7 slides and generate enough excitement to warrant a follow on meeting

The pitch deck’s purpose in 12-15 slides is to give enough visibility into your business to help potential investors understand it.

The operating plan’s purpose in 15-25 slides is to share the details of how you plan to invest the raised capital to get to the milestones that will make your company succeed.

Let us first take the overview deck. This is typically given at your demo day or when you have 3-5 minutes alone to pitch, instead of 30 minutes (when you will need your pitch deck)

Your should cover 5-7 key areas and here is what I recommend:

1. Your single line positioning, company name, founder’s email and angel.co profile address.

E.g.

1. Get Magic Now – Text this number to get what you want with no hassles

2. Seed.co – Modern business banking without branches

3. Get Meadow – Buy medical marijuana for delivery today.

The positioning is different from your tag line, which focuses more on being memorable and different about how you do something as opposed to what you do.

Here is how I think about positioning: Try to address in one word who your customer is, another word for what you do for them and third word for how you do it differently

2. The problem you solve (and focus on the customer specifically) – be as specific as possible, and show how customers are currently solving that problem.

3. Your solution & how is it different – use screen shots to show your product if you wish

4. Size of your market – total and addressable market size is preferred

5. Traction – be as specific as possible either in terms of users, revenue, or other metric you are tracking. # of meetings with customers or discussions with prospects is not traction.

6. Team – answer why you are uniquely positioned to execute this opportunity

7. Call to action – Dont say we invite you to talk to us. Ask for folks to download, or ask them to tweet for early access, etc.

Over the next few days I will outline each of these slides with examples.

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