Most entrepreneurs will sooner or later come to a point in their journeys when they will need to start looking for investment, grants, loans and other funding opportunities to launch or grow their business ideas.
In the internet era, finding out about those opportunities is relatively straight forward thanks to search engines. Getting the money in the bank however, isn’t always a walk in the park as it is never as easy as submitting an online application or a business plan.
Normally, that is only one of the steps you need to take before someone decides to invest in your idea, and more often than not, that process will include actually talking to another person face to face, to explain your business idea and answer their questions. In other words, if you want funds, you will most likely have to pitch your idea to someone.
Pitching though, is very scary. This is true whether you are a budding entrepreneur or a seasoned business owner, and feeling this way doesn’t mean that there’s something wrong with you or your idea, it just means that you care a lot. But what can you do to prepare the best you can?
The short answer is: Anticipate.
The way you do that is up to you, but you can always start by asking yourself: If I was going to invest this money into someone else’s business, what would I like to know about it?
If you have never done a business course or have some form of previous experience in a related area, you might actually not know the answer to that question. But fear not! You don’t need to reinvent the wheel, plenty of people have been there and asked themselves (and actual investors) the same question. And then they have kindly published the answers on the internet for others to learn from their experience. Some examples of such websites are:
MaRS, a Canada-based innovation hub that published a list of potential questions from investors as early as 2009: https://www.marsdd.com/mars-library/potential-questions-from-investors/
Start-up Manufactory, a start-up support company that has a blog with very good resources for UK and EU based entrepreneurs, including this list of over 100 questions from investors, divided in general topics: http://www.startupmanufactory.com/questions-investors-ask-startups-when-pitching/
Forbes has published plenty of lists about this, but I find this one particularly interesting because even the financial questions aren’t necessarily about the numbers, but about the potential of the idea, which is quite refreshing! https://www.forbes.com/sites/allbusiness/2016/06/13/50-questions-angel-investors-will-ask-entrepreneurs/
EarlyGrowth Financial Services, an american company offering finance and tax services to start-ups and small businesses, has some very good insights on the worst/hardest questions that VC’s have asked founders: http://earlygrowthfinancialservices.com/how-to-answer-investors-toughest-questions/
Seedcamp, a London-based company that helps startups achieve their first rounds of investment (and works closely with Google Campus London), has great advice on using your hard business facts to tell a powerful story about your business: http://seedcamp.com/the-power-of-great-storytelling/
And finally, Chad Green, founder of The Mission (don’t ask me what it is, all I know about it is that it has to do with creating content, campaigns and “accelerated learning”), has published this wonderful entry on Medium, to remind entrepreneurs that it is important to find investment to fund the business, but the investor should also suit the business and match the entrepreneurs’ vision: https://medium.com/the-mission/50-questions-founders-should-ask-themselves-about-investors-401f88c05903
As always, I hope you find these resources useful, but give the team a shout if you need more help.
Happy starting-up!