Funding Innovation with Netcapital
Tips for entrepreneurs and founders for raising capital. Whether you are interested in raising funds through equity crowdfunding, angel investors, or VC's, we'll share our best practices for list building and customizing your pitch for each audience.
Funding Innovation with Netcapital
The Top 5 Tips for Nailing Your Pitch
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Your business's credibility can be boosted by a strong logo, years of experience, and third-party validations. Learn how to leverage these elements, along with customer testimonials and even video, to create a compelling narrative that drives excitement and investor interest. We'll also stress the importance of practice and repetition in refining your pitch. And remember, it's not about getting it perfect the first time, it's about taking the feedback and making it better. Tune in and elevate your pitching game.
If you want to raise capital for your business visit us at https://netcapital.com/
Mastering Your Pitch
Speaker 1All right , welcome everybody who's joining live and welcome to everyone who's watching the recording . Thanks for joining us today . My name is Rob Burnett . I'm the CEO of Net Capital Funding Portal . I'm here with my team and we do these events every couple of weeks to try to just get some information out there in the world . Both entrepreneurs optimize their offerings and optimize their fundraising , and today we're going to talk about mastering your pitch and top five tips for nailing your pitch . So I'm going to go through . I've got a deck to share with everybody today . For anyone who's here live with us , if there's any questions that come up , please feel free to put them in the chat or I'll open it up to a live Q&A at the end . And then for anyone who's watching the recording , please feel free to either comment on this if you want more information , or shoot Net Capital a note at teamnetcapitalcom and we'd be happy to help . So with that , why don't we get started ? I'm going to share my screen and talk about the top five tips for nailing your pitch .
Speaker 1So first for a second , who is Net Capital ? We are an SEC registered funding portal and we help companies raise capital online and we work with Reg CF , so regulation crowdfunding to do equity crowdfunding raises . We work with all types of entrepreneurs of every shape and size . You do have to be a US based company , but we work with all types of entrepreneurs in all types of businesses and for investors . You don't have to be accredited to invest . Anyone can invest , based on certain limits set out by the SEC . Our system handles all of that . So we invite anyone who's looking to raise capital to come chat with us . We'd be happy to talk to you and any investors looking for deals . Please come to netcapitalcom , take a look at our companies available there and make an investment if it's right for you .
Speaker 1Okay , let's start with tip number one . One of the first and biggest mistakes I see entrepreneurs make is pitching their product and not pitching the investment in their product . And , as I've got written here , the world is littered with amazing products that never become big businesses , whether because the market's not big enough or they're too early or they're too late things like that . And so investors really want to understand not just if you've got a good product , that should kind of be a given , but they want to understand that the investment in your product and your company is going to grow and produce returns . And so , as you craft your pitch , you want to , of course , take some time to talk about your product or solution , but you really want to talk about how that product and solution is going to grab market share and allow you to grow the business and allow you to be profitable and allow you to become a bigger business . So talking about things like the size of your market and how you plan to get market share , talking about the kind of the number of people who are already interested in your business and how much that can grow , can be really important , and then talking about your business plan and go to market strategy can be really really useful for making sure that investors can see not just the great thing you're building or service you're providing , but they can see a world in which your service or product is ubiquitous and big and that they get to be the people who said I invested when no one could see it , or early on or when it was just a small company . So again , just to reiterate , one of the most important things you can do as an entrepreneur is make sure you get good at pitching the investment , not just the product . The product has to be more than just a good product . It has to be able to grow and produce market share and produce value for the company , for shareholders and , hopefully , the end customers as well .
Speaker 1So the second piece of this puzzle is about optimizing for audience . So if you're doing a private placement , you probably have just one type of audience angels or venture capitalists . When you're doing a reg CF raise , you have all kinds of audiences . Your audiences might be your friends and family , they might be your customers , they might be retail investors , people who like to invest a couple hundred dollars , a couple thousand dollars at a time . They might be angel investors who are used to more traditional diligence , and then might be institutions that are looking to write five , six and even seven figure checks . And each of these groups are going to want to hear about different things . They're going to want to dig into different pieces of your business and they're going to have different priorities when it comes to making investments . And so it's important to do two things . One , it's important to make sure you can talk to all of these audiences , but it's also important for you , as an entrepreneur , to think about who is my audience .
Speaker 1So companies on that capital often are pitching to two big groups of people they're pitching to their own network . Oftentimes that's customers or people in their network like friends and family . Those people might really care about the founding team . They might really care about the environmental impact of the product . They might simply want to see the product exist in the world and they might care a little bit less about what I spoke about on slide one , which is they might care a little bit less about how big you can be or the return on investment or that you can grab a big market share . They might just care a lot that they want to buy the product for themselves and they want to help you bring it to more people , and return on investment might be a secondary concern of theirs . So often those types of investors are investing based on values or personal connections or just having some fun , which happens all the time . They want to back cool products that they think are awesome .
Speaker 1Speaking to them . Now , you know there's no one right way to speak to customers or friends and family or anything like that , but I encourage entrepreneurs to think a lot about who is their kind of customer , close network market and how do they like to be spoken to . What's important to them . Right . If you're an environmental technology starting up , making sure that you hype the environmental benefits of your business can be really important for your network , and that can be what you want to highlight . If you're a consumer technology company , you might hype the fact that you know investors could get first chance at your products or your products might not exist if investors don't invest Things like that . And so you know it's important to know who your network is , who those people are , and then see what they and kind of study what they like to hear .
Speaker 1Now for investors , you're going to want to say something , something slightly different , akin to what I spoke about in the first tip . You're going to want to with retail investors and with institutional investors and angel investors . All those groups typically like to see where you know they're investing , first and foremost to get a return on their investment . So you're going to want to highlight you know how you plan to grow , how you plan to turn this investment and invest these investor dollars into your business to make it grow , to make it more valuable and to build a bigger business , and so it's important you know you might be talking to both of these audiences if you're doing a regulation crowdfunding campaign , and so figuring out how and where and our team can obviously help you if you're listing on the capital but figuring out how and where you want to talk to these people and how you want to write all your materials to make sure you cover all your bases can be tricky . Sometimes it could be a tight rope to walk , but it can be really important . And then you know A minor point , but an important one is you want to make sure you're balancing all of your materials between graphics and text . Making sure graphics are a great way for people to quickly and easily understand what's going on , but often you need a little bit more thorough explanation and text .
Speaker 1One thing I like to say is pitch decks often do not speak for themselves . Pitch decks are often designed and optimized for being presented , which means you have a person standing in front of a room adding more context and color and answering questions all the way through a pitch deck . So if you rely simply on your pitch deck by itself to pitch your business , you can often run into pitfalls , because the pitch deck actually doesn't fully convey the opportunity , but because you are not there to explain it or because there's not further . It's not detailed enough . It can lead you to , or it can lead investors to , not fully understand the opportunity and therefore companies can miss out on investments .
Speaker 1Let's go on to tip number three . Credibility and excitement kind of go hand in hand , and I think it's an underutilized tool for too many entrepreneurs . So let's talk about credibility first . Credibility is actually quite easy to build and credibility usually comes in two basic forms in this context . First is credibility as an entrepreneur and as a founding team . Some of you might be starting a business and it's the first thing you've ever done . You might be in your college dorm room or it's the first thing you're doing or you have no relevant experience in the space . That doesn't necessarily mean you're not credible in what you're trying to do . It just means you have to be careful and be more thoughtful about how you produce credibility . But even putting the logo of your university can create credibility
Effective Strategies for Pitching Your Business
Speaker 1.
Speaker 1Putting on your pitch deck , certainly putting the logos of anywhere you've worked , even just sharing how many years of experience you have in a certain field , can create credibility , and I think too many entrepreneurs put their team and themselves kind of towards the end or last , and often investors can get most excited about backing the people behind the businesses , and so don't be afraid to brag a little bit . Certainly , tell the truth , but put yourself out there and show the world who you are and why they should back you and your founding team . So , again , logos can be very powerful . Talking about years of experience If you are an expert in your space , call yourself an expert in your space . Hey , I'm an expert at equity crowdfunding . I've been doing it for six years and I've done X , y and Z , and that can build credibility and that will help people be receptive as you pitch the rest of your business .
Speaker 1And then the second piece of this is excitement , and this can go hand in hand with credibility . Sometimes it's called social proof . Building excitement around the business can look like having customer or beta tester recommendations and testimonials . It can also come in the form of telling people hey , something big is coming , building excitement and anticipation by teasing that you're gonna start a campaign but not letting people know yet . Encouraging people to sign up for a list and be the first to hear things like that , things like that . And then , finally , getting third party validations for both yourself and for your business , right , whether that's third party experts , patents can create credibility . Looking at third party experts or other IP being vouched for by a celebrity , or certainly a celebrity in the space you're in , someone who's credible , someone who might have built the business before , maybe who's on your board those can all be really good things . So those are all things you really wanna make sure you highlight as you build your business and as you build your pitch and as you build your pitch .
Speaker 1So the fourth thing now this is a little . You know a lot of people who do traditional I'll call traditional fundraising , do a roadshow with VCs . You know they often aren't creating videos , but for the rest of us , whether we're doing , you know , equity crowdfunding or whether we are just on our site or on our own website , driving excitement video is an incredible medium for driving excitement around your pitch . So , you know , working on a one to three minute video that concisely explains your business is going to be really good . It's a really good practice for becoming concise about what is important about the business , what people need to know , and for building , you know , what I'll call like the storytelling muscle . Telling a story is really important because you know , as a person with much more experience than me , talking about pitches says like everyone's got one of these in their hands , this phone , and this phone has all of human knowledge in it , and so when you want to capture someone's attention , you have to basically be more exciting than anything else in the world for at least that small period of time . And so being able to tell a compelling story and grab people can be really powerful , and video , again , is a great medium for doing that . So , you know , making sure that and in practicing and trying to build credibility , build excitement by being able to put together a concise , few minute video that really does explain your business is both a great exercise and then an incredibly powerful tool to send around post on social media , to have available to any potential investor . It can be really powerful .
Speaker 1And one piece of advice on all of this is a lot of kind of small minor point here is that a lot of entrepreneurs get caught in a trap of attempting to look almost too professional . They say , okay , if I'm going to make a video , I need to pay a big production company , or I need to make it look really good , I need to have high quality video with lights and I needed to have graphics and music and all these things , and or maybe not even have me in it at all as an entrepreneur . Right , it's just about the business . Maybe it's animated , all of those things . There's all kinds of tools on the internet now that can make very professional looking videos .
Speaker 1The problem you run into , as especially as a startup entrepreneur , is that as soon as you start to look relatively professional , you actually kind of blend in with the crowd . You look like just another product or service that you can find on the internet and it can make you look generic , and so I often encourage founders to put themselves in front of the camera . It builds credibility and it actually converts very well when you talk about click-through rates and investment rates etc . To just simply speak to the camera and to show the world who you are and to make some mistakes and to have low production quality and to just make a personal connection . In the kind of world of the internet where everything seems so arm's distance and sterile or it's all about clicks Having someone talk to the camera and say , hey , listen , here's my business . Here's why I think it's important I'd really like you to invest in me . That can be very powerful and very compelling stuff , and it can be done on the essentially zero budget , with a little bit of know-how and basically any camera from today's modern phones can take production quality videos . So as long as it's clear and as long as you articulate well what your business is and who you are , it can be a very powerful tool . And so don't let kind of ability to edit videos or production quality get in the way of making something like that .
Speaker 1And then , moving on to my fifth and final tip for today , tales all this time Practice , practice , practice . But I really I want to actually emphasize this right , because it's easy to hear that and it can be hard to actually know what that means . Sometimes , when I say practice , practice , practice and practice your pitch , I don't simply mean stand in front of a mirror and practice it over and over again . I mean get out there and pitch to people but then hear their feedback Often . I like to say that as entrepreneurs , our company is our child and we all think our babies are beautiful and most of them are but we don't see their flaws . And so when you live a business day in , day out , you can really run into this problem of not seeing where the holes are and skipping over some of the subtleties because you know it like the back of your hand , but someone hearing about your business for the first time might not understand some of the subtleties or nuances or have some of the background information required to be able to understand the opportunity you're putting in front of them . And so I think entrepreneurs often make this mistake of only pitching when they've got a hot investor on the line ready to go and never practicing it beforehand and then not asking for feedback whether the person said yes , whether the person said no . Not only asking for feedback , but then incorporating that feedback for the next time .
Mastering the Art of Pitching
Speaker 1When I worked with Techstars , which is a preeminent startup accelerator working with some of the best startups out there , we would do pitch practice for three months straight every week where company would come in and pitch and then we would tear it apart , and it took three months and by the time you got to the end , you get really great , sharp pitches , but every week they got torn apart and edited and moved around and things like that .
Speaker 1And so I really , really think that it can be tempting to think that , oh , I'm not a presenter or public speaking isn't my thing , I'm a builder , I'm better one-on-one and all of those things as an entrepreneur , you have to be a salesperson , you have to be able to get out there , and so I encourage entrepreneurs to get out there as quickly as they possibly can and as often as they possibly can and pitch to everybody pitch to their Uber driver , pitch to their parents , pitch to their colleagues because if you have open ears and you really listen to the feedback , you'll get better and you'll find where the pitfalls are and the result can be a very , very compelling pitch that can really land with a broad group of people and it'll make you a better entrepreneur , a better salesperson .
Speaker 1So , with that , those are our top five tips for nailing your pitch . Really appreciate everyone who's sat here and sat in to listen . If you need to rate again , if you need to raise capital , we would love to help Net Capital . We pride ourselves on working directly with entrepreneurs and helping them as best as we can . Feel free to shoot an email to teamnetcapitalcom or , if you're watching a recording of this , feel free to comment on this post or reach out to us via socials . We'll get back to you and , as always , you can always come to netcapitalcom and we've got forums there where you can fill out and a member of our team will be right with you .