TechCrunch

JULY 4, 2022

A lot of pitch decks I review have a slide that really shouldn’t be there: the exit strategy slide. As an early-stage startup, it’s downright nonsensical, and it shouldn’t be part of your pitch deck at all. TechCrunch+ is having an Independence Day sale! Save 50% on an annual subscription here.

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Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 22, 2015

When you see pitch after pitch – what works and what doesn’t – you start to get a sense of patterns of business model approaches, go-to-market strategies and the like. So we discussed his moving to LA for a while and working in our offices and developing his ideas and we decided to formalize it.

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Both Sides of the Table

MAY 9, 2018

This is a very common scenario when entrepreneurs pitch VCs and frankly is a very common scenario when VCs try to raise money from LPs. When you pitched me I really did love you. In fact, my personal fund raising strategy is to attend the first meeting by myself. And you get to demonstrate your skill sets without even pitching.

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This is going to be BIG.

MARCH 24, 2014

Not every VC used to get pitched by VC funds for a living and has seen hundreds and hundreds of VC pitch decks. A program like these could help you work on your strategy and help get you up and running quickly on shared backend tools as well. How are we supposed to get better? I certainly would have signed up for it.

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Entrepreneurs' Organization

AUGUST 5, 2022

MyEO DX attracts EO members who are looking to transform or reinvent their business strategies or overall engagement with entrepreneurship. Some MyEO DX members are angel investors and serial entrepreneurs with deep knowledge about the process and strategy behind buying and selling companies.

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Paul G. Silva

FEBRUARY 25, 2025

They don’t just set a strategy and hope for the best. Startups pitched for 10 minutes each. pitches , back-to-back, with no Q&A. But in BE 2.0 , Jim Collins emphasizes that great outcomes don’t emerge from perfect initial ideasthey come from relentless iteration and adaptation. It wasn’t scalable.

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This is going to be BIG.

JULY 8, 2013

Since there''s no way to both make yourself accessible and not get a fire hose of inbound, most of the pitches you''re going to have are from perfectly nice, smart people who have perfectly horrific, unworkable ideas. 2) People pitch you. All in all, not exactly a predictable lead sourcing strategy. ALL OF THE TIME.

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This is going to be BIG.

MARCH 17, 2014

One of the big opportunities for them is audience development--driving event attendees to the content, events to the readers, and doing some low-hanging fruit upgrades to their social strategy. The first pitch I got was from someone who didn''t intend on staying with the business as an employee. How is that story being told?

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This is going to be BIG.

JUNE 16, 2014

If all my deals came as intros from trusted connections that I know for years versus at founder pitch events that''s interesting data. If you meet someone at a pitch event, they''ve already got a company and they''re looking to close as quickly as possible. In fact, that''s what I tend to do--at least, what I say that I do.

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Startup Blogpost

NOVEMBER 17, 2023

20 Tips for Pitching New Business Ideas to Potential Investors To provide you with the best advice on pitching new business ideas to investors, we asked twenty CEOs, Founders, and other professionals for their top tips. You should highlight the potential future earnings while pitching your proposal.

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Entrepreneurs' Organization

OCTOBER 23, 2024

Implementing even one or two of these strategies can help you create folders that look impressive and drive results. Keep these insights in mind as you design your next folder, and let me know how it impacts your sales pitches. I hope these tips have answered your questions and inspired new ideas for your sales materials.

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TechCrunch

FEBRUARY 4, 2021

Based on my experience, here’s how to avoid making the most common mistakes deep tech founders make when pitching investors: Work on your storytelling. Make your pitch tailored to what excites venture capital investors and avoid what does not. Investor pitch meetings are not dissertation defenses.

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Both Sides of the Table

MAY 27, 2013

Any CEO worth his or her salt knows that her investors get an insane amount of emails and often spend 8+ hours / day in meetings (board meetings, pitches, partner meetings, LP meetings, corporate relationship meetings) so often email is done on the run on one’s iPhone or in the early morning / late evening. Have topics. Already covered.

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Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 16, 2014

Will our strategy change now that we have 40% more capital? . Our investment strategy has always been to do predominantly Series Seed & A round deals, which makes up > 85% of our first investments. As I like to say when asked, “For entrepreneurs you generally need to go to 2-3 cities max and probably pitch 5-15 investors.

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TechCrunch

APRIL 4, 2023

No founder event would be complete without pitches! TechCrunch editorial is looking for 6-7 founders to take part in a Pitch Deck Teardown. Mastering the Pitch Deck Pitches are critical in the quest for funding and first customers. Without further ado, here are your judges for the TC Early Stage Pitch Deck Teardown.

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Entrepreneurs' Organization

JULY 14, 2021

However, I met and pitched my business to people that I follow on social media as business role models. How was your experience in GSEA different from other business pitch competitions you’ve participated in? But the wild ads keep appearing all over my social media until I decided to apply. What an incredible experience!

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This is going to be BIG.

APRIL 23, 2012

So much of this is gut feel with a thin later of strategy retrofitted to seem more than random. Half the time, founders were pitching a completely different idea than what took off--so the VC who looks brilliant for funding the latest viral app really funded a B2B product that never took off. So why bother showing up?

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Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 8, 2014

a really wide angle view of the tech industry since you see so many concepts / so many pitches and REAL data points on how startups perform financially. Jordan joined us a couple of years ago from Fox Filmed Entertainment where he worked in corporate strategy and he previously had worked for GCA Savvian in investment banking.

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StartupNation

NOVEMBER 21, 2021

In the startup world, it’s pitch decks, not business plans that get companies funded. Making a pitch deck is an art, a science, but most importantly, a story. Angel investors and venture capitalists have also learned to expect a standard pitch deck as the first filter when evaluating a company to invest in. Demo Day pitch.

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Both Sides of the Table

MAY 14, 2018

I know all of this because every VC knows this because we’ve all either funded companies that have marketing technology or we’ve seen a pitch with a company that does this. Your pitch deck should really be your best marketing tool Your pitch deck shouldn’t contain your deepest, darkest secrets and plans.

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TechCrunch

JULY 2, 2021

Founder of Unicorn Capital and Minimal Capital, Evan Fisher 's pitching and investor strategy has helped startups raise more than $2.5 Even if the only benefit was that other investment committee members heard the story direct from the founder, that alone would make your video pitch worth it. Why you have to do video pitches.

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TechCrunch

APRIL 25, 2023

But dealmaking is idiosyncratic: a few investors might be content to make a deal over coffee, but early-stage teams still need a sturdy pitch deck or memo they can leave behind. I’m going to save you some time: many (if not most) of you are not yet ready to pitch an investor. Thanks very much to everyone who took the time to respond!

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Both Sides of the Table

JULY 7, 2015

Another founder … “When I pitched the idea to Adam, he was super on board,” Mr. Sloyan said. If you can’t raise from a few strong angels, from seed funds or from a VC then raising from a ton (let’s say 20+) angels is a perfectly acceptable strategy. All of my partners at Upfront do. If all else fails, angel-load away!

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This is going to be BIG.

DECEMBER 21, 2017

Would we pitch Series A players? It's too easy to think that if you tilt the pitch just a little one way or the other, that's going to make the difference, but that's Monday morning quarterbacking. What we found is that while most of the people turned down the invite, most of the people who showed up invested.

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StartupNation

DECEMBER 18, 2020

Below are several suggestions for how to develop a DIY public relations strategy and publicize your startup during COVID-19: Pursue virtual opportunities. A large benefit, to you, in pitching yourself for these virtual opportunities is the ability to participate from your home office – no travel required.

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Dream It

APRIL 3, 2020

His strategy for selling in 2009 is relevant to any economic downturn. Luckily, the strategy can be broken down into 3 steps. However, these executives usually have multiple lines of defense to shield them from sales pitches. Traditional sales strategies invert that and won’t work as well in this climate.

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Revolution

AUGUST 2, 2022

Rise of the Rest Senior Associate, James Barlia , and Senior Director of Strategy, Jamie Rodota , also headed to the Palmetto State to meet with local investors and judge the College of Charleston Founders Club’s pitch competition.

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Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 30, 2014

On investment strategies I have “ Deflationary Economics ” 6. I am VERY careful in board meetings and in startup pitches to tell entrepreneurs, “I feel very strongly about my opinion on this topic. On marketing I talk about “ Arming & Aiming ” 4.

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advice frameworks startup mix-use 407

This is going to be BIG.

FEBRUARY 21, 2019

A lot of VC fund pitches—and I know this because I used to vet VCs for a living as an institutional limited partner at a pension fund—sound the same. If every single fund at your size/stage/geography/strategy said yes to a deal, where are you in the order of preference for founders to accept a check from?

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TechCrunch

MARCH 17, 2023

If you’re an investor who wants to be included in future columns, email guestcolumns@techcrunch.com with “How to pitch me” in the subject line. Thanks very much to everyone who took the time to respond to these questions in such detail. There’s plenty of tactical advice here, and much more to come.

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Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 22, 2021

I counsel first-time VCs (as well as founders) to have mid-funnel strategies to get from first LP meeting to close and to put a disproportionate amount of time into this area (I say more about this on the podcast starting at timecode 27:41). a firm differentiator means that not everyone will buy into your thesis but that’s okay.

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Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 27, 2013

If these people work for reputable firms and have the right industry knowledge they ought to be on your pitch list. Importantly … I would pitch investors in SF, NY, Boston, LA, etc. And with my strategy, you take their biggest objection off the table. and say the following. “I live and work in Kansas City.

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Dream It

APRIL 21, 2020

When pitching investors, remember that your ask is like porridge; it follows the goldilocks ratio and has to be just right. If you want to dive deeper into terminology and how it impacts fundraising strategy, here’s a relevant Hackernoon article. This is a difficult question to answer.

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This is going to be BIG.

JANUARY 6, 2019

That’s where the fundraising strategy comes in where you need to decide what you can do to really put your company over the top early. If you’re trying to be one of the best ten things I see in a year—that I’m willing to risk my investors money on knowing how hard it is to build a company, then a seven just isn’t going to make it.

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Entrepreneurs' Organization

FEBRUARY 4, 2022

When I’m invited to participate in a round of pitching to potential investors, it’s more often than not part of a company’s marketing strategy around proving to the world that they care about equity for women. You have to look out for your own mental health.

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Young Leaders of the Americas Initiative

DECEMBER 4, 2019

There is an array of capital sources that entrepreneurs can approach to finance the growth of their companies, including crowdfunding, government grants, and pitch competitions, which typically would not require giving up any ownership (equity) of their business. Where can startups find money to launch their businesses?

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Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 5, 2014

What is the right organizational strategy for a large UK conglomerate to operate more effectively? What would the right technology strategy for Telecom Italia be in 5 years. I often hear pitches and think to myself, “that sounds plausible” but I nearly always start with the position that I’m not sure.

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