7 The art of pitching to institutional investors
7 向機構投資者推銷的藝術
- Will you be in tune with the VC pitch meeting vibe to maximize your chance of success?
你會與風險投資演示會的氛圍保持一致，以最大化成功的機會嗎？ - Do you have a great VC pitch deck? Suggestions on how to structure it.
您有一份出色的風險投資提案簡報嗎？有關如何結構化它的建議。 - Surviving VC shark tank drama. Are you ready for nasty curveballs?
在 VC 鯊魚缸中生存下來的戲劇。你準備好應對狡猾的曲球了嗎？
Different types of investors require different types of pitches. In anecdote 6, “Angels—your bridge financing solution,” I discussed how to pitch to individual angels, who, even if they are part of a group with organized meetings, ultimately invest about $25,000 per person. In this anecdote, I’ll cover pitching to institutional investors, which means Venture Capitalists; highly organized, fund-based angel groups; private equity firms; and corporate or strategic investors.
不同類型的投資者需要不同類型的推銷。在軼事 6 中，“天使-您的橋樑融資解決方案”，我討論了如何向個別天使推銷，即使他們是組織會議的一部分，最終每人投資約 25,000 美元。在這個軼事中，我將談論如何向機構投資者推銷，這意味著風險投資家；高度組織化的基金型天使團體；私募股權公司；以及企業或戰略投資者。
Definition 定義
Institutional investor is a legally organized partnership or corporation whose sole business activity is investing to make a profit consistent with their corporate structure (for shareholders, limited partners, or parent company). These are the investors you will get to once you have market traction, have proven Product-Market Fit, or later when you are ready to scale the company.
機構投資者是一個合法組織的合夥企業或公司，其唯一的業務活動是投資以實現與其公司結構相一致的利潤（針對股東、有限合夥人或母公司）。這些是您在市場上獲得動力、證明產品-市場契合度或準備擴大公司時將會接觸到的投資者。
There are naturally a lot of common topics between the pitch to angels and the pitch to institutional investors. In both you need to highlight the problem, your solution, the opportunity, your business model, the competition, and so forth. But as discussed in anecdote 6, the angel pitch is on the order of 10 minutes or less and the institutional investor pitch is at least 30 if not 60 minutes in length. So even if the outline is similar, the amount of depth you will be going into is vastly different.
天使投資者和機構投資者之間當然有許多共同話題。在兩者中，您都需要突顯問題、您的解決方案、機會、您的商業模式、競爭對手等。但正如談話 6 中所討論的，天使投資者的演講時間大約是 10 分鐘或更短，而機構投資者的演講時間至少是 30 分鐘，甚至可能長達 60 分鐘。因此，即使大綱相似，您將深入探討的內容量會大不相同。
7.1 The pitch 7.1 俯仰角
The relative informality that works with angels won’t work with serious, professional investors. It may seem surprising, but the only way to get an audience with these investors is going to be via word of mouth. This means you must get a warm introduction from someone who knows you and knows the investor, and the individual at the firm knows the introducer and likes and trusts them enough to have accepted this meeting. That means you are starting off with a positive. Do everything you can to build on that.
與天使投資者合作的相對不拘形式對於嚴肅、專業的投資者是行不通的。這可能會讓人感到驚訝，但與這些投資者見面的唯一方式將是通過口耳相傳。這意味著你必須獲得一位認識你和投資者的人的熱情介紹，並且公司裡的那個人認識介紹者，並且喜歡並信任他們足夠接受這次會面。這意味著你從一開始就有了一個積極的開端。盡一切努力來建立在此基礎上。
You need to tell the story of why, out of the thousand companies this partner has seen a pitch from, yours is worth listening to and is going to be something they will want to invest in.
您需要講述為什麼在這位合作夥伴看過的上千家公司中，您的公司值得聆聽並且將成為他們願意投資的對象。
ask yourself 問問自己
Does your idea fit this firm’s investment thesis and, more importantly, this partner’s investment thesis? If not, you may be wasting precious time.
您的想法是否符合這家公司的投資主題，更重要的是，是否符合這位合夥人的投資主題？如果不符合，您可能正在浪費寶貴的時間。
Most recently, I was pitching a startup whose business model was licensing a hardware design that would be built into a silicon chip. Many, many VCs got burned in the early 2000s when investing in semiconductors was hot and lucrative, but as Japan became dominant in semiconductors, the US market consolidated, and the openings for small companies vanished, and a lot of money was lost. I got a nice, warm introduction to this partner, but my introducer did not realize these VCs now had an almost allergic reaction to investing in semiconductors. At firm after firm, the partner I was presenting to would start to get really weird by my third or fourth slide, at which point it was best if I just politely closed my laptop, stood up, and walked out. I didn’t do that, but there never was a point to continuing the discussion—that partner had already made up their mind they were not investing, and a little dance of social politeness ensued, where they did not want to kick me out and I did not want to pick up and walk out, but both of us knew this was a nonstarter. This startup was a real challenge, and after a couple of years of meeting with VCs—and I kept track of each one and what their one-line closing statement to me was—I had met with over one hundred firms.
最近，我正在為一家初創公司進行推廣，其商業模式是授權一種硬件設計，該設計將被建立到一個矽晶片中。許多風險投資者在 2000 年代初投資半導體時賺了很多錢，但隨著日本在半導體領域的優勢地位，美國市場逐漸整合，小公司的機會消失了，很多錢也因此損失了。我得到了這位合作夥伴的友好介紹，但我的介紹者沒有意識到這些風險投資者現在對投資半導體幾乎有一種過敏反應。在一家又一家公司，我向他們展示的合作夥伴在看到我的第三或第四張投影片時開始變得非常奇怪，這時最好的做法是禮貌地關上筆記本電腦，站起來走出去。我沒有這樣做，但從來沒有繼續討論的必要—那位合作夥伴已經決定不進行投資，於是社交禮貌的一點點舞蹈開始了，他們不想把我趕出去，我也不想離開，但我們兩個都知道這是行不通的。 這家新創公司確實是一個挑戰，經過幾年與風險投資人的會面，我記錄了每一位投資人對我的結尾一句話，我已經與一百多家公司見過面。
Investors can be lemmings and many (except those whose thesis is to not follow any trends) tend to follow the same trends. Recently, it has been trends like Software as a Service, artificial intelligence (AI), blockchain or crypto-currency, and consumer-facing products or services, all of which have been very hot for quite a while, so there are a lot of investors focused on those areas. If you do something in one of those categories, great, if you are very, very clearly different, and better than anything else in your same, very crowded category. My part-hardware, part-software cybersecurity company was about as far as you can get from SaaS, AI, and consumer-facing products, but one investor said to me, “Can you do something SaaS in your solution? If so, I might be interested.”
投資者可能會像旅鼠一樣，許多人（除了那些主張不跟隨任何趨勢的人）傾向於追隨相同的趨勢。最近，像軟體即服務、人工智慧（AI）、區塊鏈或加密貨幣，以及面向消費者的產品或服務等趨勢一直很熱門，因此有許多投資者專注於這些領域。如果您在這些類別中做些什麼，很好，如果您非常明顯地與同一個非常擁擠的類別中的其他任何事物有所不同並且更好。我的部分硬體、部分軟體的網路安全公司與軟體即服務、人工智慧和面向消費者的產品幾乎完全不同，但一位投資者對我說：“你的解決方案中能做一些軟體即服務嗎？如果可以，我可能會感興趣。”
Most investors are going to listen and engage actively while you present. But it was not a rare occurrence to have a partner who would bring an associate into the room, and while the associate dutifully took notes and asked a few questions, the partner was looking at their phone the entire time. The rudest example of this happened at the biggest, most famous of Silicon Valley firms, Andreessen Horowitz.
大多數投資者在您演示時會專心聆聽並積極參與。但有時合作夥伴會帶一位助手進入會議室，助手會認真記錄筆記並提出幾個問題，而合作夥伴則整個時間都在看手機。這種最粗魯的例子發生在矽谷最大、最著名的公司之一，安德森·霍洛威茲。
That first critical, one-on-one meeting with the individual partner who is screening your deal for the full partnership to consider, should be a crisp, thirty-minute pitch that allows ample time for questions. If you do not wow them, you do not get to go past GO!
與負責篩選您交易以供全體合夥人考慮的個別合作夥伴進行的首次關鍵一對一會議，應該是一個簡潔的、持續三十分鐘的演講，以便有充足時間提問。如果您沒有給他們留下深刻印象，您就無法繼續前進！
The big challenge is that you must fight investors’ short attention spans by getting them very excited and interested in, at most, the first six slides. In fairness, it is not just the short attention spans but also pitch deck fatigue. Don’t make it easy for them to lose interest—make your story, and your presentation of that story, compelling. Remember, engage them with a story, keep your slides sparce and simple and easy on the eyes. No matter what, never lead with, or focus too much time on, technology. That is the cardinal mistake of technical founders time and time again.
面臨的重大挑戰是，您必須在最多前六張投影片中讓投資者激動並感興趣，以對抗他們短暫的注意力。公平地說，這不僅僅是因為短暫的注意力，還有演示文稿疲勞。不要讓他們輕易失去興趣，讓您的故事及其呈現方式引人入勝。請記住，用故事吸引他們，保持投影片簡潔、簡單且易於閱讀。無論如何，永遠不要以技術為主導，或花太多時間在技術上。這是技術創始人一次又一次犯下的致命錯誤。
7.2 The deck (aka your business plan)
7.2 甲板（又稱您的業務計劃）
Here are the major elements to include in your pitch deck:
以下是您的推銷簡報中應包含的主要元素：
Table 7.1 Major elements of the pitch deck
表 7.1 募資簡報的主要要素
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The Big Problem
大問題
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Explain the big problem that motivates you and that you solve. Use no jargon. Be sure to explain how it is not being solved today.
解釋激勵您的重大問題以及您解決的問題。不要使用行話。請確保解釋為何當前未解決這個問題。 |
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Your Solution
您的解決方案
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Describe your great solution and how it is ideally suited to solve the just-mentioned big problem. This is where you fit in a brief explanation of how your thing works. Don’t go deep. If they like this and you, they will have an expert spend time digging in, so no need to do that now.
描述您的優秀解決方案以及它如何理想地適合解決剛提到的重大問題。這是您簡要解釋您的產品如何運作的地方。不要深入細節。如果他們喜歡這個解決方案和您，他們會有專家花時間深入研究，所以現在不需要這樣做。 |
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Big Opportunity
重大機會
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Now that they understand there is a big problem and you have a real solution, you want to appeal to greed and tell them how big this opportunity is. Use Serviceable Addressable Market (SAM), never Total Available Market (TAM) or they will roll their eyes.
既然他們明白存在著一個重大問題，而你有一個真正的解決方案，你想要訴諸於貪婪，告訴他們這個機會有多大。使用服務可達市場（SAM），永遠不要使用總可用市場（TAM），否則他們會翻白眼。 |
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Business Model
商業模式
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How do you make money? Are you SaaS, enterprise software, consumer-focused, IP licensing, pure services, a mix of product and services? Will you have multiple revenue streams? That is ideal if true. Even better is if, like in SaaS, you can point to Annually Recurring Revenue (ARR); if you have that, the VC will be eating out of your hand because nothing excites them more than predictable future revenue.
你如何賺錢？你是 SaaS、企業軟體、消費者導向、IP 授權、純服務，還是產品和服務的組合？你會有多個收入來源嗎？如果是這樣的話，那是理想的。更好的是，如果像在 SaaS 中一樣，你可以指向年度循環收入（ARR）；如果你有這個，風險投資者會對你趨之若鶩，因為沒有什麼比可預測的未來收入更讓他們興奮了。 |
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Go-to-Market (GTM)
市場推廣（GTM）
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How are you going to market? This is where you describe the vertical market segments you are starting with, what Geoffrey Moore famously called the bowling pin where he argues you need a single narrowly defined vertical market (the bowling pin) that is your solitary focus. What about partnerships? They are a critical aspect of your Go-to-Market so talk a bit about how you will leverage partners to expand sales.
你打算如何進行市場行銷？這是你描述你將從事的垂直市場區段的地方，Geoffrey Moore 所謂的保齡球瓶，他認為你需要一個單一明確定義的垂直市場（保齡球瓶），這是你唯一的焦點。那麼合作夥伴呢？它們是你市場推廣的關鍵方面，所以談一下你將如何利用合作夥伴來擴大銷售。 |
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Proof Points
證據點
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If you are pre-Series Seed, you probably have not got customers or revenue to speak of yet, but certainly you have been talking to prospective customers to understand what the potential for your product/service is. Include what those people said.
如果您是預先種子輪，您可能還沒有客戶或收入可言，但肯定已經與潛在客戶交談，以了解您的產品/服務的潛力。請包括這些人說過的話。
If you are going after an A-round or later, you have customers and need to demonstrate Product-Market Fit, which means at least three large customers, except in high-volume consumer, in which case they want to see large numbers and monthly growth rates. Also include here any awards, impressive press, articles, and so forth.
如果您正在尋求 A 輪或更高輪融資，您必須擁有客戶並展示產品市場契合度，這意味著至少三個大客戶，除非是高交易量的消費者，這種情況下他們希望看到大量數據和月增長率。同時還應包括任何獎項、引人注目的新聞、文章等。 |
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Competition
競爭
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Never say there is none, even if you are unique. They will discount what you are saying at best, and not want to proceed with you at worst. If you are unique, focus on where the money for your product is going to come from. Assume customers cannot just create new money out of thin air, which means to buy your product, they probably stop buying something else. That something else, at a minimum, is your competition. This is also where you talk about how you defend yourselves against those inevitable competitors.
永遠不要說沒有，即使你很獨特。最好的情況是他們會對你所說的不屑一顧，最壞的情況是不想繼續與你合作。如果你很獨特，著重於你的產品將來的資金來源。假設顧客不能從空氣中創造新的資金，這意味著為了購買你的產品，他們可能會停止購買其他東西。那些其他東西，至少是你的競爭對手。這也是你談論如何捍衛自己免受那些不可避免的競爭對手的地方。
Do you have a patent “moat” that protects you from encroachers like the protective water troughs surrounding medieval castles? Do you have a plan to get dominant in a market niche fast and expand from there, making it hard to challenge you? Is there something else about the product that makes it highly defensible?
您是否擁有一項專利“壕溝”，可以保護您免受侵犯者的侵襲，就像中世紀城堡周圍的防護水溝一樣？您是否有一個快速在市場利基中佔主導地位並從那裡擴展的計劃，使其他人難以挑戰您？產品是否還有其他方面使其具有高度防禦性？ |
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Team
團隊
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Some argue to discuss this up front, but that forgets that VCs have areas they strongly shy away from. So, no, I do not think this goes up front. If you get past the first six slides and still have their attention, you are good, and they will get here and want to find out how strong your team is. Some like to include the board and advisors. I think that is rarely valuable, unless your advisors are truly a key part of your value proposition, or they fill an important expertise gap.
有人主張提前討論這個問題，但這忽略了風險投資者極力避開的領域。所以，我認為這不應該放在最前面。如果你通過了前六張投影片，並且仍然吸引了他們的注意，那麼你就做得很好，他們會想知道你的團隊有多強大。有些人喜歡包括董事會和顧問。我認為這很少有價值，除非你的顧問真的是你價值主張的關鍵部分，或者他們填補了一個重要的專業知識空白。 |
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Use of Funds
資金用途
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Talk about the raise you are asking for. Describe what you plan to spend the funds on, how long it lasts, your burn rate, and your “ask”. You should be asking for enough cash to last eighteen to twenty-four months.
談談你要求的加薪。描述你計劃如何使用這筆資金，持續多久，你的燃燒速度以及你的“要求”。你應該要求足夠的現金，可以支撐十八至二十四個月。 |
That was nice and short, wasn’t it? Resist the urge to add a lot more. You will get many chances to go deeper in key areas, and so don’t load up your first pitch.
這很簡短，對吧？抵制添加更多內容的衝動。您將有許多機會在關鍵領域深入探討，因此不要在第一次提出時加載太多內容。
You will get whipsawed with some investors who provide post-presentation feedback or various advisors who offer services where they help entrepreneurs craft their pitch decks, saying “put the big opportunity up front,” “more on product,” “less on technology,” “team is the most important thing,” and you should listen and consider their ideas, but my experience says the outline above is generally the best one. It has all the requisite bits, and you can reorder elements as the feedback requests.
有些投資者會給予演示後的反饋，或是各種顧問提供協助創業者打造簡報，他們可能會建議「將重大機會放在最前面」、「更多產品資訊」、「減少技術內容」、「團隊是最重要的」，你應該聽取並考慮他們的想法，但根據我的經驗，上述的大綱通常是最佳的。它包含所有必要的要素，你可以根據反饋要求重新排序元素。
Another common challenge is when a prospective investor wants you to send the pitch deck to them ahead of time. The problem is that a great presentation in person and one that can be read ahead are not the same thing. In person, you will follow good presentation rules like three (maybe five, if pushed) lines of text on a slide, maximum. Lots of good visuals, and your voice track that guides the listener through the slide, adding in useful details. (And, of course, in person you can be sensitive to confusion or a questioning look from the investor.) But if you send this type of deck ahead of your presentation, they won’t hear your voice track, so they will look at your slides and not get your key messages. Do you make multiple decks? Sounds like a good idea until you try it. Because we tend to change the pitch deck almost continuously, you would then have to make those changes in two decks . . . continuously. Alternatively, you veer off best practice and put more text on a slide. That is a slippery slope to the point where you could end up with the kinds of slides common in the Department of Defense (DoD) world: an encyclopedia on each slide.
另一個常見的挑戰是當一位潛在投資者希望您提前將簡報資料發送給他們。問題在於，在現場進行的出色演示和提前閱讀的演示並不相同。在現場，您將遵循良好的演示規則，例如每張幻燈片上最多三行（如果必要，可能是五行）文字。大量的良好視覺效果，以及引導聽眾通過幻燈片的聲音軌跡，並添加有用的細節。（當然，在現場，您可以對投資者的困惑或質疑的表情敏感。）但如果您在演示之前發送這類型的簡報資料，他們將聽不到您的聲音軌跡，因此他們將查看您的幻燈片，而無法獲得您的關鍵信息。您要製作多份簡報資料嗎？聽起來像是一個好主意，直到您嘗試過。因為我們往往會幾乎持續不斷地更改簡報資料，那麼您將不得不在兩份簡報資料中持續進行這些更改...。或者，您可以偏離最佳實踐，並在幻燈片上添加更多文字。這是一條會使您最終可能得到國防部（DoD）世界常見的那種幻燈片的滑坡：每張幻燈片上都是一本百科全書。
I always end up with appealing slides that have the least amount of text possible, but still enough to make the point. It is worth having a talented visual communications expert with graphics skills by your side because excellent pictures are worth . . . you guessed it, a thousand words. I had the very good fortune to have a five-star general of a visual communications expert as my director of marketing, and her decks were sendable while being even better when presented in person, and we did not have to maintain two separate decks.
我總是最終製作出具吸引力的投影片，盡可能減少文字，但仍足以表達重點。值得擁有一位具有圖形技能的優秀視覺傳播專家在你身邊，因為出色的圖片價值...你猜對了，勝過千言萬語。我非常幸運能夠擁有一位五星級的視覺傳播專家擔任我的行銷總監，她的簡報既可通過郵件發送，當面呈現時效果更佳，我們不必維護兩份簡報。
Somewhere along the way during my thirty-five-year entrepreneurial career, investors and entrepreneurs have all but dropped the written business plan for early stage (Seed and Series A) companies, and instead one’s “business plan” is the pitch deck. Having said that, the exercise of writing a detailed business plan, even if no one ever asks for it, is invaluable (see anecdote 17, “Ten steps to a formal business plan”). Thinking of your pitch deck that way will put you in the right frame of mind about how serious an endeavor it is to create one and deliver it to perfection. Serious, professional investors see literally thousands of entrepreneurs pitching, so the content, as well as the delivery, best be different, compelling, exciting, and convincing. And you must grab them in six slides before you get a chance to tell the rest of your story. Everyone has their idea of the perfect outline for a pitch deck. Ultimately, your story, your personality, your style, will determine what the actual outline should be. Once you have that, practice, practice, practice so you are smooth and confident during that initial meeting—the one that opens the gate to continue going with that firm.
在我三十五年的創業生涯中的某個時刻，投資者和企業家幾乎已經放棄了早期階段（種子輪和 A 輪）公司的書面商業計劃，而取而代之的是“商業計劃”是投資者的簡報。儘管如此，撰寫詳細的商業計劃的過程，即使沒有人要求，也是無價的（參見軼事 17，“制定正式商業計劃的十個步驟”）。將您的簡報視為這樣的方式將使您對創建一個完美的簡報以及交付它有多嚴肅的事業有正確的心態。專業的投資者看到成千上萬的企業家進行簡報，因此內容以及交付方式最好是不同的，引人入勝的，令人興奮的和令人信服的。在您有機會講述您的故事的其餘部分之前，您必須在六張投影片中抓住他們。每個人對簡報的完美大綱都有自己的想法。最終，您的故事，您的個性，您的風格將決定實際的大綱應該是什麼。一旦您掌握了這一點，請練習，練習，練習，以便在初次會面時表現得流暢自信——這將打開繼續與該公司合作的大門。
7.3 The moral of this anecdote
7.3 這個軼事的寓意
These days, investors don’t request business plans very often. Certainly not for early-stage companies. Instead, everything hangs on the pitch deck and those thirty to sixty minutes you get with a partner at a VC firm. This is why the content, organization, and your performance are so critical since you only get one chance to make that first impression. If you get a no, you will never know exactly why they said no. Usually they will simply say “not a fit for us,” which could mean it’s not a fit or it could mean the partner did not find your pitch compelling. So, work very, very hard on your pitch, practice it a lot, especially in front of friendlies who will give you honest feedback. And seek out expert coaching. Put in the time!
這些日子，投資者很少要求商業計劃。尤其是對於早期階段的公司。相反，一切都取決於推銷簡報以及你在風險投資公司與合夥人共處的三十至六十分鐘。這就是為什麼內容、組織和你的表現如此重要，因為你只有一次機會給人留下第一印象。如果被拒絕，你將永遠不知道他們為什麼拒絕。通常他們只會說“不適合我們”，這可能意味著不適合，也可能意味著合夥人沒有覺得你的推銷有說服力。因此，非常非常努力地準備你的推銷，多加練習，尤其是在朋友面前，他們會給你誠實的反饋。並尋求專家指導。投入時間！
