
How to Present to Investors - gerad
http://www.sequoiacap.com/grove/posts/bzxr-how-to-present-to-investors
======
acgourley
Great advice - investors see so many deals and believe in the perfect market
hypothesis. They need to know _what changed_ to break their default cynicism.

Note it's different from their advice on business plans / decks:
[http://www.sequoiacap.com/grove/posts/6bzx-writing-a-
busines...](http://www.sequoiacap.com/grove/posts/6bzx-writing-a-business-
plan)

The link above basically says: _purpose, problem, solution, why now..._

The article today says: _why now, solution, facts_

~~~
mathattack
I like the "What's changed" bit too.

The other good thing is the James Bond analogy. My eyes glaze over on any
presentation that doesn't tell me the punchline in 5 minutes, and VCs see a
lot more of them than me.

------
dheer01
After going through a bunch of their other articles, seems like its a bad idea
of sequoia to do something like this.

Most of their entrepreneurs will suffer from a selection bias for obvious
reasons. Almost every article does a shoddy job decoupling correlation from
causation like this one.

~~~
triplesec
Can you elaborate a bit ore there? what context are you referring to regarding
correlation/causation?

------
md2be
Good advice - but did twitter solve a "pain point"? Did Facebook? Sometimes
you crate a market vs. solving a problem.

~~~
001sky
"Fun" is probably not a painpoint, good catch, and this is one reason why the
above examples caught on.

------
minimaxir
It appears that Sequoia's new Grove system doesn't allow user commenting.
Which is somewhat of a shame, as it makes the posts very one-sided and unopen
to debate, which is what appears to be happening here in the HN comments.

~~~
benworthen
I'm the editor of Grove. First, thanks for checking it out and for talking
about it here. Our initial goal was to create some compelling pieces that the
entrepreneur community would find helpful. To that end, we took the advice we
got from the founders we worked with to build the site, which is launch and
improve over time. The ability to comment is certainly one of the things we'd
like to add going forward, but we feel we have to earn the right to be a
community site first. We're hosting a drinkup next month, which hopefully will
be a start. In the meantime, forums like HN where there is already a big
community are a great place to discuss the site.

FYI here's a link to the drinkup:
[https://sequoia.co1.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_dpzD7CVJ0DtTwgd](https://sequoia.co1.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_dpzD7CVJ0DtTwgd)

~~~
beat
Aw c'mon, it's the internet! You don't need to "earn the right to be a
community site". You just swagger on in, set up comments, filter the spam, and
see if enough others show up to make a flamewar. :) Sink or swim, just like a
startup!

(That said, I totally understand getting content rolling before adding
comments)

------
dheer01
Too boilerplate to be worth anything. Bet exactly zero companies got funded
this way.

~~~
gerad
I found this bit pretty insightful:

"At this point, the first 5 minutes are almost up and there’s just time to run
through an agenda slide, which covers all the usual ground (e.g., product,
market size, team, etc).

"From here, many entrepreneurs roll right on to tell the story in greater
detail. But your 5 minutes are up, and we suggest you pause and check in with
your listeners. Most likely, they have seen businesses in the past which they
think are similar. Maybe they have some biases based on prior experience in a
similar market. It’s best to flush those out early so you can address them as
you go through your presentation. So after laying out the agenda, we like to
ask the investors whether there are any particular areas of concern or
questions we should be sure to address.

~~~
dheer01
If its good business the right investors will poke 'through' your presentation
to find the right answers. No good investor will skip on a break-through
business because of a shoddy presentation.

It might seem that from the authors prose that they belive that their
presentation skills got them funding - which is why this is all wrong and
sends exactly the wrong message out. Most first time entrepreneurs who raise
funding can't stop gushing how they were able to convince investors - the root
cause is very rarely that simple. Fund raising is not about 'convincing'
anyone - it can almost never be done - more often than not its more about
'discovering' the right investors and your ppt has no role to play.

~~~
ahilaly
I don't think our presentation skills got us funded. But I do think our
ability to persuade investors, recruits, partners etc to work with us -- even
though we had no relevant experience -- was critical to our success. To do
that, you have to communicate with your audience in a compelling way. Everyone
has their own style and way of doing it. I'm just sharing what worked for me.

~~~
dheer01
I am sure you guys are super smart and persuasion skills to match. The point
that I am trying to make is that, maybe so are a lot from the other 99.9% of
entrepreneurs who did not get funded by sequoia.

The lines of causation that we hold dear to us most of our professional lives
somehow break down when we talk about startups. Maybe the simple reason that
you got funded was that one of the partners thought that your market is going
to be big (because of his specific personal background) and you were just
another good team which just happened to focus on the exact same market -
maybe also because of one of your founders background.

I understand sequoia motivation to start something like this. Even though they
have a clear vested interest, I would like to believe that this was born out
of an altruistic pursuit. The entrepreneurs though, are best served to take
all this advise with bucketloads of salt.

~~~
drusenko
All advice should be taken with a bucketload of salt (Limited life experiences
+ Over-generalization = Advice -- Paul Buchheit).

That doesn't mean advice is pointless though.

