Comments on: What should I send investors? Part 1: Elevator Pitch.

By: Anthony

Anthony — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 01:19:28 +0000

Very informative article and thank you for the example :) One question is how to go about pulling someone into a different industry? ie going after the best fashion designer to invest in a cosmetic line. Any advice is much appreciated :)

By: Looking to raise capital? Send an executive summary. « Lightspeed Venture Partners Blog

Wed, 04 Jun 2008 07:22:11 +0000

[...] agree with Venture Hacks’ advice on what to send an investor when they say: Summary: An introduction captures an investor’s attention, but a great elevator [...]

By: Binay

Binay — Wed, 07 May 2008 18:41:46 +0000

Great example of an elevator pitch except that it is tailor-made for technology/IT companies and assume that the founders have been successful in the past. I guess it would be a different ball game if you don’t fit into this stereotype.

Binay

By: Crafting an effective elevator pitch « Another Startup

Crafting an effective elevator pitch « Another Startup — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 16:04:15 +0000

[...] don’t pretend to have all the answers to creating an effective elevator pitch, and others have done a much better job covering this topic than me. One site in particular lists a [...]

By: Brandon

Brandon — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 23:32:23 +0000

The bigger question here may be: how did he secure these meetings and get face time with several very large capital venture funds?

By: Richie

Richie — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 09:32:43 +0000

My latest pitch, rip it apart everyone :)

The Future of Online Advertising. Using Artificial Intelligence to create an ad exchange that eliminates arbitrage and click fraud while making advertisers & publishers more money. Me = Serial Entrepreneur. Chairman = former CMO of DoubleClick. CTO = actually invented an online ad format.

By: Nivi

Nivi — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 08:37:43 +0000

Our email discussed product, traction, and team in that order.

For a cold call:

If your traction is interesting, I would start with traction then team.

If your team has a pedigree and your traction is not interesting, I would start with the team and traction in that order.

And try to keep each one down to a sentence.

And cut the size of the elevator pitch above in half.

If your traction isn’t interesting, your team doesn’t have a pedigree, and you’re doing a cold call, your product better be really really really interesting and you better be able to instantly demonstrate the value of what you have built so far. But it is still a stretch.

By: Richie Hecker

Richie Hecker — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 08:15:19 +0000

I love that Ali G thing. It was brilliant and insane. Completely agree on the pitch email. I’d consider breaking it down to how to approach an investor you don’t know vs. someone you were introduced too…

By: Sumit Chachra

Sumit Chachra — Sat, 03 Nov 2007 06:17:39 +0000

- Stated the problem
- Had a solution/prototype ready to show
- Had numbers (however crazy they were) to back him up, in terms of revenue/market opportunity
- Last but not the least, was funny (and took all the setbacks and rejections of his idea in his stride… instead of getting all angry!)

By: chrisco

chrisco — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 17:42:27 +0000

Agreed, like with most communications, short and sweet is usually best. Also agreed, with VCs you need to spell it out for them and really need to use the “dog food” maxim, which states that VCs are like dogs, in that they always want to eat what the other dog is eating. Most books (and blog posts) call this “social proof.” Cheers, chrisco PS: Has Ali G lost his touch?