I’ve started three companies, and now I’m an angel investor. So I’ve been on both sides of the table.
There are lots of good articles out there about pitching, and surely everyone who pitches me has read some of them. Still, a few problems appear over and over again. If you’ve ever had to sort through resumes and cover letters, you’ve seen this effect: People tend to have the same misconceptions and therefore make the same mistakes.
What follows are four problems (and 4 more problems from here) I see all the time, each of which makes me roll my eyes and sometimes even terminate the conversation early.
As someone who has both sought venture capital and distributed it, I’m lucky to have a pretty unique perspective on what works and doesn’t work.
- Do what you think you “should” do instead of what feels right
- Gloss over your strategy for customer acquisition
- Have five-year projections
- Be dismissive of the competition
- Have a big monthly burn
- Pretend this isn’t risky
- Don’t interview me
- Don’t have an exit strategy