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!
Do we dare to dream big?
Core belief: World CHange Starts With Educated Children
To reach Big, Hairy, Audacious Goal: 10 million children by 2010
70% of Nepal is illiterate, suffering from poverty of opportunity.
John rented Zag the yak to carry the library of books from one village to village.
GDP is linked with education.
Purchasing Power Parity (economy) is linked with education.
Infant mortality is linked with female literacy.
110 million children of primary school age are not enrolled in school.
880 million people around the world cannot read or write. 2/3 of these groups are girls and women.
SOLUTIONS:
To work with government to supply teachers
To enlist parents to build the school rooms
To build reading rooms – learn their own language and english
To publish local language books
Long-Term Girls Scholarship – funded by Don Valentine
“Educating girls yields a higher rate of return than any other investment available in the developing world” The World Bank
Room to Read fund raise.
BUSINESS MODEL:
1) Hire strong and entrepreneurial local teams – not to send volunteers or expat
2) Engage the Community – We call them “Challenge Grant” – catalyze creation of schools, give them ownership.
“You can only help ppl who wants to help themselves”
3) Be nimble and act quickly, no excuses – Team opened 39 schools in post-tsunami area in one year even though no present operations there.
4) Invest heavily in human capital – training teachers and librarians
5) Invest heavily in monitoring and evaluation – 84% Laos librarian is confident to train new librarian.
They published books in Hindi, Sinhala, Nepalese – 10,000copies per books. Authors include 10, 15-year-olds.
6) Have an Intense Focus on Results
“What gets measured, gets done”
7) Makes efficient use of donor’s money – instituted no Land Rover policy – can’t open 25 libraries, can’t open 4 new schools in Nepal.
Run a social business:
Low overhead ensures the money goes where it’s needed most
87% Program services
Rated 4 Star by Charity Navigator.
Create a World-wide movement of “Super Empowered Individuals”
“Go Big or Go Home!” on philantropy. Scale up
“If Starbucks can do it”
Low prices alllow everyone to “Be the change”
What is the most image can you imagine? – potential or kinetic – take action.
Create a World-wide movement of “Super Empowered Individuals”