Practicing your startup pitch? An angel investor has created a bot that can make you a master presenter.
So you’ve got this brilliant idea for a startup. You’ve got your team and you’ve done your research. You’ve even got a business plan and Powerpoint presentation ready. All that is left to do is bedazzle the heck out of your angel investor / incubator / seed fund / VC firm and get them to throw money at your business.
Simple, right?
Pitching Is About Trust
Of course, any startup worth their salt knows that the bedazzling bit is where things get tricky. It doesn’t matter if you’ve got the world’s greatest idea or a foolproof business plan. If you fail to impress the people you need funding from, your idea remains a dream.
See, your angel investor/incubator/seed fund/VC firm are people too. Like it or not, as human beings, we make decisions emotionally first, then rationalize with logic.
Which is why pitching is an important process a startup has to go through. During the pitching process, your angel investor / incubator / seed fund / VC firm’s underlying primary concern is trust.
Even though 10 – 15 minutes is too short a time to establish actual trust, it’s the initial impression that matters. Emotionally, trust is formed based on your perceived character and personality. Logically, how well you understand your business is what rationalize their trust in you.
Assuming you’re a decent person, then the real work is in convincing people to invest in you.
Practice Makes Perfect
This is where Pitchbot comes in. Created by Roger Dickey, an angel investor himself and who has done his fair share of pitching, he wants to help the startup community.
He understands there’s fear and pressure involved to make a pitch perfect the first time round, or else risk losing the funding. With this app, he wants it to be a ‘friendly investor’ any startup can use.
When you first launch the app, you choose the investor you’re pitching to and you’ll be asked about your idea.
The app is designed to ask you questions about your business. These are common questions gathered from top investor blogs like Sequoia and Y Combinator, and are based around topics such as team, product, market, traction, values, exit strategies etc.
As you answer, you can see whether your investor is ‘hopeful’ about your idea.
Based on your answers, the app will let you know whether you deserve funding or not. So not only does it stimulate a practice scenario between you and your investor but it also helps you gain clarity on your idea and your weaker points.
Some Things To Note
Pitchbot is a web-based app, meaning you can’t download it off Apple App Store or Google Play. Nevertheless, the app seems optimized even if you’re using it on your mobile phone.
The responses are mostly in multiple choice format. But these are canned responses, so in a real meeting, you can be more flexible in your answers. Also, the bot tries to make ‘conversation’ and it’s friendly and polite, but bear in mind in the real world, people can be sarcastic or nasty.
The app will tell you if you’re eligible for funding or not. If you fail, it will let you know which areas you need improving. While this is good, the advice is rather generic and not in-depth, so you do need to work on the issues yourself.
But overall, the app is still a great tool for you to validate your idea and improve your pitch.
