With so many of my friends involved in a presentation or a pitch recently, I thought I might post some notes that I have from a short lecture by David S. Rose on 10 things to know before you pitch a VC for money. Why is this relevant? One of the worst presentation situation to be in is when you have to ask someone else for money, hence being able to do so effectively would give one wings when in other situations. (I will not discuss the fact that VCs actually need credible entrepreneurs as well to achieve their investment requirements.) And of course, there is a fair number of people actually looking for funding.

Having attended so many such lectures throughout my days in ASES and NOC, and read more detailed commentary on the topic (do check out The Art of the Start if you’re interested), the content wasn’t anything out of the blue, but it was a good lecture nonetheless.

Key Ideas
1. Define your goals – VCs invest in people, keep in mind that you’re really trying to say “I’m the one you’re looking for”
2. Manage Emotions – Grab attention, Wow with solid content, end off by hitting the homerun with something they cannot resist
3. Use Imagery instead of bullet points (I am a huge advocate of this)
4. Go to the point – Give them what they are looking for (adhere to the conventional templates which VCs are used to looking out for)
5. Give attention to detail – It tells what type of person you are when you don’t check for typos

Jumping right back into the great Mac vs PC debate, an interesting take away from the lecture might be that despite Jobs having raised “corporate presentations and product introductions to an absurdly high level”, one can more than make up for the inability to do this by being extremely good in everything else like Bill is.

Enjoy the 15min video and share any comments that you might have!

What were you excited about as a kid?
That’s what you’re passionate about, VCs will fund you, etc. Life’s do short to do something for somebody else

Government can’t take risk for space frontier as there’re too many issues involved that would cause them to lose out politically
Have to go with the private industry

Long Term Mission – Asteroid Miner, lots of $$ in there

How X Prize Foundation is financed

Spirit of St Louis – Flight across the Atlantic for a prize

If he can do it, everyone can do it – the flying fool, Lindberg

Hence X Prize is the prize to simulate the prize for Lindbergh

Line of Super Credibility – Things you do that no matter what you do it will succeed. Line of credibility only brings you to being acknowledged

Insurance Company took the bet with X Prize that for each trench of advancement, the company will pay out

Founded Zero G airplanes to have fun

Space Adventures – Rocket Racing League

True breakthroughs require taking risk. The day before something takes off, it is a crazy idea. Got to be willing to take these risks.

How can we incentivize really crazy stuff? Originally was by government.

Average age of Apollo program engineers was 26 as nobody was there to tell them what they could or could not do. Same as dot com revolution.

Go do the crazy idea. Have to take risk.

X Prize is to change behavior

http://www.xprize.org/, http://www.gozerog.com/, http://www.rocketracingleague.com/

Leverage on people’s capabilities for sponsorship instead of $$ all the time
When you ask for great advice you get great money
It’s a people process, not a $ process

Make other people heroes

peter@xprize.org