Essays

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12. Specific numbers are good.

If you have any kind of data, however preliminary, tell the audience. Numbers stick in people's heads. If you can claim that the median visitor generates 12 page views, that's great.

But don't give them more than four or five numbers, and only give them numbers specific to you. You don't need to tell them the size of the market you're in. Who cares, really, if it's 500 million or 5 billion a year? Talking about that is like an actor at the beginning of his career telling his parents how much Tom Hanks makes. Yeah, sure, but first you have to become Tom Hanks. The important part is not whether he makes ten million a year or a hundred, but how you get there.

13. Tell stories about users.

The biggest fear of investors looking at early stage startups is that you've built something based on your own a priori theories of what the world needs, but that no one will actually want. So it's good if you can talk about problems specific users have and how you solve them.

Greg Mcadoo said one thing Sequoia looks for is the "proxy for demand." What are people doing now, using inadequate tools, that shows they need what you're making?

Another sign of user need is when people pay a lot for something. It's easy to convince investors there will be demand for a cheaper alternative to something popular, if you preserve the qualities that made it popular.

The best stories about user needs are about your own. A remarkable number of famous startups grew out of some need the founders had: Apple, Microsoft, Yahoo, Google. Experienced investors know that, so stories of this type will get their attention. The next best thing is to talk about the needs of people you know personally, like your friends or siblings.

14. Make a soundbite stick in their heads.

Professional investors hear a lot of pitches. After a while they all blur together. The first cut is simply to be one of those they remember. And the way to ensure that is to create a descriptive phrase about yourself that sticks in their heads.

In Hollywood, these phrases seem to be of the form "x meets y." In the startup world, they're usually "the x of y" or "the x y." Viaweb's was "the Microsoft Word of ecommerce."

Find one and launch it clearly (but apparently casually) in your talk, preferably near the beginning.

It's a good exercise for you, too, to sit down and try to figure out how to describe your startup in one compelling phrase. If you can't, your plans may not be sufficiently focused.


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