The ideal early-stage investor pitch

I’ve been involved with 12 startups as they closed pre-seed/seed. Here’s my take on the ideal path from idea to closing the first round, in the form of an investor pitch.

• 2-line description of product.

• Co-founder(s) were trying to do X, found it difficult. Couldn’t find a solution that was A, B & C.

• The problem that niche TG faces when trying to do X are P, Q & R (extrapolated from A, B & C).

• Currently, they’re solving the problem by doing Y.

• We figured that with tech catalyst / cultural shift / reg change there’s a way for niche TG to do X and save money / make money / save time / have a 10x experience / something else top of mind for TG. So we built product

• Product is a mobile / web / physical solution built keeping niche TG in mind. One can easily feature 1, feature 2, feature 3.

• We built out a scrappy alpha in <= 2 weeks and took it to customers.

• We learnt a lot from staying close to our customers. They have strong feelings on the problem. We iterated quick over the next couple of months and ended up monetizing / very low churn / cold inbound users

• One key insight is that customers are excited about feature because insight.

• We did some sizing and the market is large. Market sizing with method. (If market is not big enough, go to adjacent markets, deepen or broaden existing market)

• Our roadmap is clear. Product roadmap over the next 4 quarters (clear features, don’t overload, delay mobile app if possible)

• GTM roadmap over the next 4 quarters Hustling for early users, we realized channels D, E & F worked the best. Additionally, we’re experimenting every quarter, we’re thinking G, H & I.

• 3 milestones we will achieve in 1 year.
• Milestones 1 & 2: Metric related to customer acq / sales efficiency / monetization or ship key product feature
• Milestone 3: Metric related to customer outreach (community / social media / partnerships)

• We figured out that we can lock-in customers. Our moat is network effects / counter-positioning / switching costs / IP / other

• We’re seeing early evidence of a flywheel (only if there is one, don’t make one up)

• We’re raising amount over timeframe to build product, iterate with customers to get to PMF quick and prove out 3 reliable acq channels.

• We’re keeping the team lean, primary hires are 1-3 engineers working with co-founder 1 as co-founder 2 obsesses over growth until we’re ready to make our first growth hire.

• We imagine a world where company vision that shows this could be a $5B+ IPO-able company in 8 years

The reason this story works is not because it’s a good story. But because it’s the best way to validate an idea, understand the business and have a clear path of what/how to build.

There’s nothing more powerful than doing the right things and simply talking about what you did.