How to pitch a startup to investors

Presenting a project for a new business model is not an easy task. The founders tend to make a document that may have different aspects to improve.

For example, it may be based on a document that explains the technical merits of the idea. However, there may be poor or missing content when addressing issues such as the competitive landscape, market benefits, the presentation of the requested investment, or even the order in which the document links terms.

In addition to a suitable presentation, it's important to know what type of investors the new project needs, how to approach potential investors, have a strong narrative, and be able to clearly answer any questions a potential investor might have.

The following articles discuss each of these topics in order to offer some key messages that may be useful.

• Respond to a VC about their initial valuationThere's a trick question investors almost always ask, and it's guaranteed to make founders uncomfortable: "What are your expectations for valuation?"
• Attract investors with the perfect summary slide The DocSend team discovered that more and more successful slides have one thing in common: a great summary slide.
• The slide most founders get wrong on raising. A slide that almost every founder gets wrong when putting together a pitch deck to raise money from venture capitalists. This slide is generally referred to as "the question" and is typically found toward the end of the pitch deck. 
• 4 tips to find the financing that suits your companyStartups are finding it increasingly difficult to secure funding, and even unicorns seem cornered, as many lack both capital and a clear exit. 
• What investors need from the problem-solving slideIdeas are cheap, and nothing is so amazing it can't be improved. However, not every problem is worth solving. 
• The competition slide in the pitch presentationThere's no startup without competitors, but you need to know how to address them, including how you plan to exist alongside them. 
• focusingThe key is that every MVP (minimum viable product) a company creates must focus on answering a very specific question. Anything more than that is wasted time and effort.
• If you have more than one business model, you don't have a business modelEarly-stage founders might be tempted to come up with half a dozen ways the company could make money. Don't fall into that temptation: five unproven solutions don't make a real solution.
• Sample Presentation: Tomorrow University PresentationEducation-based startup platforms are quite rare, and a team of people trying to establish a completely new, remote-only university is even rarer. Tomorrow University raised around $10 million in its Series A round.