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Photo credit: MassChallenge

It’s another season at the world’s largest accelerator, MassChallenge, where hundreds of start-up businesses across the globe are polishing their pitches in hopes of getting mentored and landing that critical investor audience. Sitting for several years on judging panels, I’ve honed my tips about an alluring approach.

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Photo credit: MassChallenge

I gave my first presentation of the year last week in Tel Aviv to those Israeli teams whose applications have afforded them the chance to compete with a live pitch and earn a finalist slot in the accelerator. These are some of the points I made:

  1. Educate.  You have two parallel shots to draw in your audience. Converse like an excited or impassioned human.  And make sure your slide titles advance your plot.  Investors who learn something interesting — even complicated — will remember your company.  But easy on the details or the science — you still have to pretend that you’re explaining the business to your great aunt.
  2. Differentiate.  What makes your organization especially well-positioned to maximize the available opportunity?  Have you protected intellectual property? Do you have a unique R&D strategy or operational efficiency?  Can your team rein in chaos, productize and sell?
  3. Market. A product or service that “sells itself” (because it’s an app that’s sure to go viral and there are a billion smartphones) almost never happens. Offerings should dovetail with industry or market trends. Have a nuanced rendition of who will pay what for it and the existing sales or other channels that will likely get it to them.
  4. De-Risk. In start-up parlance, each step of identifying and overcoming potential vulnerabilities, surpassing intermediate milestones and boosting credibility is referred to as “de-risking.”  A great idea in and of itself rarely wins the day.  You must show through team building, partner relationships, patent filings, customer testimonials, a credible board of advisors, actual revenue or other traction that you’re on a course that is both systematic and productive.
  5. Project. The right balance between aggressive and conservative financials is tricky.  The key is expertly identifying assumptions and risks underlying your traction and scalability.  This is a good place to identify shortcomings or challenges too – prior to the accelerator, you get a bit of leeway.  Nothing worse than getting beat up by an angel for being perceived as un-coachable.
  6. Budget. How much are you looking to raise?  In what form?  Be prepared to describe the development, manufacturing, hiring, marketing, distribution, or sales you can reasonably accomplish with that amount (or a fraction of it!).

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Photo credit: MassChallenge

Jonathan Draluck counsels public and private companies on a variety of commercial and strategic transactions. He is focused on helping companies from a range of industries migrate systems and functionality to the Cloud and deploy related infrastructure.