Before you walk into an investor meeting or on stage to present your startup, you need to know the answers to the questions listed below
Don’t expect to skate through only on the strength of your slide and a well-practiced speech.
by
Entrepreneurs Author of The Art of Startup Fundraising & Serial Entrepreneur for Forbes
photo: Pixabay
Investors want to know all the things you left out, and how you came up with the assumptions you made. Be prepared to impress by making sure you have an answer to all of these questions investors will ask.
When you are raising capital you are always going to get the same type of questions with regards to your business over and over again. Some of these questions will help you understand where you are weak. You will need to listen enough to understand where you need to apply a correction. Such correction will be applied to either the story that you are going out with or to the business itself. Regardless, make sure you are writing down questions from investors so that you can nail your answers on future meetings.
Typically the questions start rolling as soon as you start presenting your pitch deck. The pitch deck template by Silicon Valley legend Peter Thiel is a great example of simple story telling in slides to help you get funded (see it here).
Here is the list of questions broken down by the different key areas that will help an investor understand if your company is fundable ready and if it is a good fit with their portfolio of investments.
Market
- How big is the market opportunity?
- What percentage of the market share do you hope to get?
- Who exactly is your best customer?
- How long will this take?
- How do you come up with these figures?
- What is your PR strategy?
- Who do you most aspire to be like?
- Who do you least want to be like?
- Why is this the right time for this product or service?
- What is your marketing strategy?