Keep internal records of which narratives work best. Ask people why these resonate more than others. You usually do NOT want to spend precious time delving into bullet points about key features at this stage.
You can tell investors how the product works later on in the pitch. At this point you are simply a brand that solves a problem a lot of people have. Strive to make the narrative relatable and fun.
During your pitch, consider introducing investors to your key features, your value proposition and, where applicable, your user interface UI at the same time. Key features are the specific jobs your product or service accomplishes or assists with. A most basic example is that a bowl is innovative in relation to a plate. Both share the key feature that they hold food. A bowl adds another feature by holding liquids comfortably.
Many innovative media products add several key features to solve nuanced problems. Limit yourself to developing a small handful of key features at first. One way to think of your value proposition is as the sum of your key features. How exactly are you solving problems, addressing pain points? The bigger the problem and the simpler the solution set, the more impressive your value proposition is likely to be. At its core, a value proposition is a statement about why someone needs your product or service.
Answer this question in your presentation visually while stating it verbally. Show investors your product or your UI and walk them through two or three tasks that can be accomplished easily. This is a chance to show off your key features and to make your potential investors understand your value proposition so well they become excited to invest and to bring this product with these, or similar, key features to audiences.
This will make the value proposition pop. Do not feel the need to introduce every feature or to narrate every design choice, but you should show that you have a good sense of design and that your design will make your key features easy to find and use.
A popular tool for creating wireframes is Balsamiq. You can build a wireframe mockup of your application or web application that users can actually click through and try out. If you are pitching a tangible media product, e. Whatever your combination of digital mockup and tangible prototype is, it is preferable to show something basic that helps investors understand key features rather than show an elaborate mockup on which little or nothing works.
Stick to the minimum viable product and keep the mockup clear and simple; however, note that certain startup competitions or investors may require working prototype sites or apps. Tips for crafting great-looking, useful user interfaces are abundant online. Try out completely different approaches to UI on potential customers. Once you have narrowed down their basic color and design preferences using stock design elements, try creating your own color combinations, button styles, and menu designs.
Iteration in innovation refers to building out prototypes again and again—first for the developers themselves, then for beta testers, and then for a hopefully growing audience. At the root of the concept is repetition, which means the process of designing, building, testing, seeking feedback, re-designing, etc.
Think, for example of a common platform such as Facebook and how many times it has been redesigned since you or the people you know have been using it. If you spend even a few months using a favorite platform or app, you will likely see iterations of its development. What you need to know during the entrepreneurial pitch process is that iterating can happen while the pitch is being developed. This is normal and expected. You should seek to iterate based on user data and feedback.
You have shown investors that you and your team have a valuable idea and the skills to work in a lean startup environment using an iterative process. Now you must demonstrate how you are going to make money. The next few slides in your deck should present a brief discussion of product-market fit. In two to three slides, show how big the market is, show where your product fits, and show evidence of iterative development according to customer preferences.
Your goal is to quickly show the investors where there is an underserved mass market. Then, you must show that your product can tap that market and reach real customers. Every aspect of the market you are entering is fair game for questions from investors. You can head off killer questions by showing a depth of understanding about the market.
There may be many solutions in the marketplace. Do not ignore them. Explain why your solution fits best. Practicing customer development, then, is establishing a process where you allow consumers to pull great products out of your efforts.
Fit your market research into your presentation in under a minute. Emphasize the size and strength of the potential market in a slide.
Then, demonstrate that you have conducted careful customer research to learn what potential users want. You should have data from testing general product ideas, key feature combinations, and design elements. You should be able to show quantitative data, probably from surveys, and qualitative data, probably from focus groups. Present the highlights of customer development in a couple of slides. Investors only want the summary of this data.
Present it in a narrative form. For the lean startup, it cannot be stressed enough how important customer development is.
You need to show that you can bring your product and its customers together. Products evolve, and so do customer tastes, so you need to show that your team can already work on this product in response to user feedback data.
Your first task in conducting market research is to define the scope of the media market where your product will compete. If you are working on a journalism startup, define a news niche in terms of geography and topic.
If your news product focuses primarily on one topic, you will probably need to cover a wide geographical area, perhaps a national market. If you are planning to bring news to a geographical region, limit it in a logical way.
You might determine a reasonable driving radius around your community and cover the counties and cities within, which is essentially what defines a Designated Market Area DMA in broadcast news.
You might wish to focus more narrowly on a single metro area or suburb. Use census data to learn everything you can about the people who live in your coverage area. Read broadly about the history of the area, its economic background, and its economic future. Plug into the local entrepreneur scene long before you launch your media startup because understanding the startup market is your key to understanding the economic future of your area.
Uber has become synonymous with corroded corporate culture, [8] and it has proven to be a high-stakes global gamble for investors. The sharing economy model is a difficult sell because the ideas are cheap and execution is expensive.
Whatever your product is, you will need to demonstrate that this particular shared service is needed. They will want to know that your media product is not already available elsewhere, offered by someone with more experience and an established customer base.
You must demonstrate that your product is unique. Describe your competition as clearly and directly as possible. Name names. Cite links. Clearly and accurately describe their relevant products and their features. Know your competitors as well as you know your own brand. In the context of where your targeted markets overlap, know them better than they know themselves.
Competitive analysis should be presented in about two slides. Pretending not to notice major players in the field will get you laughed off the presentation stage. You need to note in one slide who your key competitors are in the marketplace. You need to explain how your product or service is unique. What key features do you offer that no one else does?
When you have similar features, how do you prioritize them or present them in ways that are unique or more affordable or more tailored to a target audience than the options that already exist? Answer these questions for each competitor. Demonstrate this knowledge in clean, carefully crafted slides with straightforward storytelling.
Neither overestimate nor underestimate the competition. When organizing this section of your slide deck, you are going to have to make executive decisions about what to leave in the presentation and what to cut.
Identify the brand strategies so that you can anticipate where your competition is headed. Explain if this can be prevented. If that is not possible, you need to come up with a different product. Pivot to target a different market or develop a different feature set. This element of your presentation can easily get convoluted.
You may not wish to address all of these elements. If you do good customer development work, you can prioritize which of these aspects of the product matter most to them and limit your competitive analysis discussion based on that research. In this way, customer development is doubly important. It tells you how to focus your own product and tells you where to focus your competitive efforts. Your competitive analysis needs to evolve as you go through the customer development process.
In about three slides, explain your revenue model, that is, what your customers, advertisers, underwriters, etc. One of the best ways to express your revenue model is to work with the Business Model Canvas BMC see Business Models chapter for more on this [10] to map out how money will flow through your organization.
The BMC helps you to picture how your startup fits into its financial ecosystem. It helps you to plan to whom exactly you will deliver those services and how you will deliver them, and it demands that you understand what your costs are and where your revenue will really come from.
The BMC will inform your estimation of startup costs and operating costs. From those revenues, startup costs, and operating costs , you can determine your breakeven analysis according to what your class syllabus or competition guidelines require.
Groups in media entrepreneurship classes often go through a dozen business model canvas drafts, or more, as they plan and develop their product and as they conduct customer development.
The BMC will help you to decide on a revenue model and express it in visual form, though the actual visualization should be tailored to suit your product.
You must indicate how much of your startup funds you have already contributed, if you plan on seeking other funding sources, and what proportion of the business you are going to hand over to investors for the amount of funding you request.
You should probably share only a summary of your plan. Spend no more than three minutes presenting realistic, well-thought-out financial estimates.
Again, the iceberg approach may be the best approach. Investors will want to know what basis you have for your financial estimates and claims. Often, this is the part of the presentation that generates the most questions from the audience.
Document your sources for any financial assertions you make and be prepared to hand over more detailed business plans if asked. Make the case that your product is a great investment. Practice with mentors, friends, family members, and your professors so that you can make the strongest possible feasible case for funding.
An example of a successful pitch is CardLife featured on this [11] blog post of the 35 best pitch deck examples. It is a tracking company that communicates to users, usually business, how much they are spending on subscription software services. Businesses have a problem. They subscribe to many software solutions. They do so at different times for different amounts for plans that may renew automatically year over year or that may increase in price, sometimes without review.
CardLife helps track this expense in order to make it easier for businesses to balance budgets. Business Management. Written by. Sherif Mamdouh.
So why do we still pitch? Surely, there must be a better way for VCs to spot startups with potential, right? Need more resources on how to pitch an idea? Tags :. Business Strategy. Got a story to share? Become an EHL Insights contributor. Live plan pitch: The live plan pitch relies on visual aids instead of a spoken presentation. A salesperson will give investors all of the information they might require to make an initial assessment of a business, in written form.
This might include a market summary, financial data, business objectives, and legislative hurdles. The investor can then make a decision about whether they want to learn more. Presentation pitch: This typical involves a salesperson running investors through a presentation that explains what the business does, how much money it makes, what challenges it faces and so on. The investors can ask questions of the salesperson to clarify certain parts of the presentation. What is the purpose of developing a business pitch?
The main objectives during a full business pitch include: Identifying customer needs the problem The pitch should identify the unfulfilled customer needs which the business will be fulfilling. There are many types of customer needs including: Functionality Convenience Design Reliability and efficiency Compatibility Price The sales team will explain how customers are unhappy with current market offerings or that they would be receptive to a new product or service.
Explaining what the business does the solution During the business pitch, the sales team must explain how the business fulfils customer needs and solves their problem as mentioned earlier. Who has created the business Another common purpose of a business pitch is to share the background detail of the owners of the business.
Business model The presentation should include details of the business model that the enterprise will using to provide this solution to consumers. It usually includes information like: The plan for the successful operation of a business The sales strategy direct sales, franchising, online only, advertising-based How it will make a profit Current sources of revenue The intended customer base Current product range How and where the product is made Details of financing Industry analysis An industry analysis assesses the current business environment faced by the enterprise.
Risks There will always be risks involved with starting a business. Implementation plan The business pitch should also be used to share the implementation plan with investors. Financial projection Another important purpose of the business pitch is to provide investors with financial projections. Financial needs Finally, every business pitch should explain how much capital the business needs from the investor — and what they get in return.
Have you read? She can be reached on email alexandra-dimitropoulou ceoworld. You can follow her on Twitter at ceoworld. Jeffrey Magee C-Suite Advisory.
Jan Jacobs C-Suite Advisory. What Are Business Partnerships? The business partnership. What exactly does that mean in a business sense?
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