How to pitch: What's the aim of an investor pitch? **Spoiler… it's not investment**

It is incredibly easy to approach your investor pitch with a myopic view. Setting out with the sole objective of nailing down an investment limits your horizons and keeps you from opening up to the broader opportunities on the table. Too much focus on seizing the investment can also spawn an air of desperation and impatience, leading to disappointing outcomes. The true focus of your investment pitch should be the next conversation, and the steady development of a solid foundation in your new partnerships.

CONVERSATION > CASH

Although it may seem antithetical to your aims, switching your focus from cash to conversation will serve you far better in achieving your long term goals. Focussing on gaining interest rather than immediate investment will orient you towards realising your ultimate objective.

It is naive to imagine an instant handshake and a briefcase full of cash during your pitch. Focussing too much on a quick result can also lead to a self-defeating mindset when these achievements don’t quickly come to fruition.

As with many aspects of pitching, when developing your communication or presentation skills, we must think first and foremost about our audience. When meeting with potential investors it is vital to view the opportunity from their perspective.

Investors receive dozens of pitches and are accustomed to the necessities required to invest. They have a duty to their shareholders and their boards to exercise due diligence. Between your initial pitch and that all important second conversation, they must challenge your ideas and vision; run your numbers and analyse the promise of your premise. In turn, you owe them the space to digest your presentation and decide for themselves the best path forward.

You should be prepared for, rather than disheartened by, this equivocation. Moreover, you should want investors who challenge your ideas in the pursuit of success. You should be eager for business partners who challenge your ideas and expand your thinking. It is far better to have investors who think strategically than investors who blindly open their wallets.

SPARKING CURIOSITY

Too much of a hard sell can be off-putting. You will serve yourself far better if you gear your pitch or presentation towards sparking interest and curiosity. You should give them all of the fundamentals but allow them to enquire further about the details.

To gain that next conversation, you need to make sure you are giving the investor everything needed to generate that next meeting. It can be difficult to know how much is too much and to recognise when you are overselling. A useful checklist can be found by following the greek principles of logos, ethos, pathos and kairos.

These principles can be understood as the concept or reason (pathos), the people who are involved (ethos), the essential numbers (logos) and why now is the right time (logos).

Following these, and providing them with equal weight, you will answer all of your investors' essential questions without lingering in one area too long and raising concerns about the other factors.

Begin with pathos. You should outline your product and services in the cleanest, and most universal terms. Identify the qualities of your pitch and the value for the user. Once you have established a solid basis of your foundational idea you can move onto ethos - the people involved. This is your opportunity to share your personal story. Using open and honest language, establish why you (and your team) are well positioned to lead this concept to success.

When focussing on ethos, you should remember to involve your potential investor under the umbrella of “people involved”. They are potentially part of this venture and you should view them as such. Researched knowledge of their portfolio is a great way to demonstrate how this could make a useful and mutually beneficial asset in their investment suite. If that information isn’t publicly available, you can use this opportunity in your pitch to inquire after their portfolio, show interest in the investor and increase the sense of “us” within your ethos.

Once you have the what and the who, you will be in a confident position to deliver the numbers - logos. Having established your credibility, you can now deliver the all important financial component of your pitch. Be clear and concise. Be honest about the variables and humble in your estimates.

Finally, you will move onto the most compelling of the four principles - kairos - the “why now?” element of your presentation. When screenwriters and showrunners are pitching ideas to a studio, the most important question is always “why now?”; what does this movie or TV show say about the world today?; how does this show, whether contemporary or period, reflect society?; how does it capture the zeitgeist?; and why will an audience engage with this idea now?

You should deliver the kairos section with a confident understanding of the market and a good projection of the direction the world is heading. It is the only element of your pitch that should evoke a sense of urgency. You should also be presenting your idea with an evergreen view of its usefulness. Much like the screenwriter pitching an idea, you should approach “why now?” without dependence on the zeitgeist. Moods can shift and times can change so you should be careful not to sound too “flash in the pan”.

ICEBERG AHEAD

It is useful to picture your pitch or presentation as an iceberg. Above sea-level, we view only ten percent of an iceberg, the other ninety percent silent beneath the surface. Whilst you don’t want to withhold vital information from an investor, keeping back ninety percent of the information gives you a wealth of conversation to continue with.

If you deliver a pitch and dump out 100% of your knowledge, you give yourself nowhere to go. It can be bombarding for the investor and can lead to repetition in your answers once the investor engages with you.

Working with a communications coach, you can find confidence in being succinct. Preparing for follow-up questions, a second conversation, and having plenty of room to expound on your ideas, will demonstrate your fluency in the subject rather than running out of road and echoing the information you’ve already given.

The old adage “leave them wanting more” is incredibly useful to consider when delivering your pitch. Following the greek principles, you can be certain you have given the investor everything they need to further their interest. On the strength of your ideas and the confidence with which you have shared them, you will have provided the investor with enough to want to hear more. Winning that second conversation is the vital first step on the pathway to investment.