Investor Pitch: Excite, Engage & Exit with the Ask

I've recently been coaching some entrepreneurs presenting at upcoming investor conferences. It's something I've done for years and still enjoy. I remember the first investor pitches I gave and the first I heard, and can appreciate how "blind" many entrepreneurs are flying when doing their first investor presentation.

Although my advice is always tailored to the entrepreneur and company at hand, there is one nugget I try to share with all. Remember the goal of your presentation and don't wander too far from it. In most situations, the goal is to Excite, Engage & Exit with the Ask.

Excite: Focus on what is most exciting about you and your business. Don't get bogged down in re-hashing your business plan. If your technology is truly disruptive, make that point clear. If your team brings significant experienced or unique relationships, hit that. If customers are seeing immediate ROI from your products, put that front and center. Your number 1 job in an investor pitch is to generate excitement, preferably very early in your presentation. Getting audiences to shift forward in their chairs and pay attention is much more important than hitting the "textbook" areas of business analysis.

Engage: If the forum is a conference, then Engage means to deliver your message in a way most people will understand. Ditch the technical jargon and provide real-world examples of creating value for customers. If there is a unique pain point for your customer, share that story because it could evoke immediate understanding/emotion from your audience. If the forum is a partner meeting, then also look for opportunities to bring the audience into a discussion. Ask "how often X has happened" to them, their companies or their families -- something you fix. Ask about the firm's approach to investing so you understand them better and can relate to that in your presentation. Do something to drive two-way discussion -- a partner meeting presentation that goes one-way is almost always deadly.

Exit with the Ask: Always, always, always end with a slide that details what you're asking for or proposing. Don't douse audience excitment with a dead-end close. You need to funnel the audience's interest in your presentation into a decision point. Note, however, that the ask isn't always just an investment amount. To the contrary, the ask at a conference may just be to get audience members to your booth for further questions. The ask at a partner meeting typically involves a dollar amount, but also includes understanding process "next steps" -- driving due diligence or a subsequent meeting. By presenting your Ask to an excited and engaged audience, with your key Ask, you've maximized your chances for success. At the worst, making the Ask will help you avoid wasted time. If you didn't excite the listener and they don't react to your Ask, it's a good sign to improve your pitch and focus your energies on your next prospect.

Related posts: steve tennant, don dodge, wil schroter, matt ridenour

Highlight NoFollow Links: Chrome "Plugin"

The combination of Google Chrome's speed and a fatal Firefox bug has converted me to Chrome full-time.  The biggest loss of such a switch is my treasure chest of great Firefox plugins.

Unfortunately Chrome doesn't offer plugins yet (actually, they do for select parties found via this Chrome URL hack), but there is a close approximation for many needs: bookmarklets + javascript.  In fact, there's a site offering various Chrome "Plugins" using this approach: ChromePlugins.org.  That was a really savvy domain/focus -- thousands of Chrome plugins seem inevitable long-term and the site is well positioned for that future.

I've pulled multiple plugins from that site, but one was missing for exactly my needs.  I wanted a plugin that would highlight nofollow links, not just the text, but the background of the text -- for easy viewing across sites with diverse text colors.  ChromePlugins had a plugin that changed text color to red, but sites like ReadWriteWeb (image above of pagerank passing paid links) already color their links red.  Therefore, I tweaked the code to highlight nofollow links with a yellow background (and red text).  The code is below:

javascript:var%20t=document.getElementsByTagName('a');for(i=0;i<t.length;i++){if((t[i].rel.toLowerCase()=='nofollow') | (t[i].rel.toLowerCase()=='external nofollow')){void(t[i].style.color='red');void(t[i].style.background='yellow');}}

To install it, you only need to drag this icon to your Chrome bookmarks bar: 

Let me know how it works for you...

UPDATE: I received a great suggestion in the comments, to also highlight 'external nofollow' links.  I've updated the javascript to do this.  If you grabbed the prior, just delete it and drag the current icon of my face to your bookmark bar.

My Year of Firsts: Skydiving, Half-Marathon, Now What?

Any of you that are friends via Facebook or Twitter may have seen that I started the year with my first skydive.  It was a once in a lifetime experience I'd recommend for everyone.

Then, a couple weeks ago, I ran my first half-marathon.  One of my entrepreneurs (Ted Murphy) and I chose Gainesville's Five Points of Life Race Weekend as a joint training goal.  I'm happy to say that my half-marathon went better than I expected (beat my goal by 5min) and it was sure nice sharing the experience with my wife, my girls, Ted and his better half Tara.  As you'll see in the video below I snagged from Ted, he also finished strong, completing his first marathon. Congrats buddy!

Following the race, my wife asked how I was going to follow-up January and February, with another "first" in March.  That's a good question.  Via twitter I've received ideas as varied as running the bulls, ballroom dancing, and hiking the Appalachian Trail.  However, it's gotta be something I can squeeze into weekends.  What do you think, if I could knock off a "first" each month this could definitely be a year to remember!  Ideas please...also, please don't call this my "bucket list" -- I am getting old, but give a guy a break...

Sponsored Conversations

Congrats are in order this week for a couple visionaries, Sean Corcoran of Forrester Research and Ted Murphy of IZEA.  Sean published a break-through research report on the value of sponsored conversations, continuing Forrester's track record in leading-edge Interactive Marketing Research.  The report, entitled "Add Sponsored Conversations to Your Toolbox: Why You Should Pay Bloggers to Talk About Your Brand" discussed pros and cons of sponsoring bloggers, and shared some key components of successful campaigns: 1) Disclosure, 2) Authenticity, 3) Relevance, & 4) Relationship.

Congrats are also in order for Ted and the whole IZEA crew, because IZEA was a core piece of Sean's report.  In fact, IZEA's Kmart campaign success appears to have been the driver for the research effort (Kmart casestudy below) -- following up on some twitter-driven research by social media guru Jeremiah Owyang.  Ted predicted this time would come, the very first day I met him back in 2006.  At that time, the idea of sponsored bloggers was blasphemy and Ted was one of those proverbial "pioneers" taking some arrows in the back.  Since that time, his pioneering ways have created an industry and unlocked a marketing approach that could save the social media graveyard that's being filled daily by banner/CPM-starvation and display advertising that just doesn't work.

IZEA Kmart Social Media Marketing Campaign Casestudy

Related posts: Sean Corcoran, Ted Murphy, Steve Rubel, Jeremiah Owyang, WOMMA, Techmeme, Shel Holtz, David Armano