Most entrepreneurs in corporate clothing don’t do well with complex sales models, product review boards, rigorous budgeting of finite funds, and managing trade-offs between products. Entrepreneurs are all about the new and never been done – in particular, new markets, products, technologies, and customers. Therefore, talented executives leave the world’s great corporations and bravely take on the quest of creating the next Microsoft, Google, Cisco, or Sun.
Read MoreFor entrepreneurs, first meetings with investors really are make-or-break events. By building and delivering a high quality Investor Presentation, you can pave the way for a successful first meeting and an on-going dialog with investors about funding your company. In this post, I’ll show you how to build a winning investor pitch. In Part 2, I’ll lay out the secrets to delivering your pitch – successfully – in person – to people with funds to invest.
Read MoreOf all the investor documents, the Executive Summary provides you with the most freedom to create a winning story. It’s only 1 to 10+ pages long, so why is it so flexible? Because it can be built in short, medium, or long form; you can vary the content and order of the information more than in other documents, and you can concentrate almost entirely on the story rather than the mechanics of how you are going to get things done. In short, it’s your story – distilled and tasty.
Read MoreFirst of all, there is no magic formula for valuation. It's a negotiation based on the characteristics of your market, your company's performance, and the quality of your team. Secondly, not all money is the same. Your company's valuation matters, but it's not the only thing that matters when you look to raise money. The quality of the funding source matters, too.
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