This document provides advice for entrepreneurs pitching their startup to venture capital investors. It outlines a 12 slide structure for the pitch, including sections on the executive summary, problem, market, solution, business model, technology, intellectual property, competition, team, financials, capital needs, and concluding remarks. Tips are provided for each section, such as clearly outlining the problem and market size, demonstrating the solution is disruptive, explaining the business model and path to profitability, and showing the team has successful experience.

1. The Perfect Pitch
or strikeout
Akhil Saklecha
Artiman Ventures

2. Artiman: Investors & Entrepreneurs
U.S. Investment Team
Amit Shah
Yatin Mundkur
Tom Dennedy
Akhil Saklecha
Ajit Singh
Tim Wilson
India Team
M. J. Aravind
Ramesh Radhakrishnan
US Operations Team
Ida Ng
EIR
Frank Thibodeau
Adam De La Zerda
Mahmood Panjwani
Atul Sharan
Rob Levy
Venture Investing Experience
– Collectively managing $900+M invested in 140+ seed/early–stage companies
– 88 exits with aggregate realized return of 3.3x
– 11 IPO’s and 32 acquisitions
Entrepreneurial Experience
– Co-founded 10 startups in the U.S. and India
– 6 successful exits with aggregate value of > $1 Billion
• ZeitNet, PipeLinks, Equator, Daksh, Ross, Kaleida, Clarity, Airgo,
BioImagene
Operating Experience - public and private
– Cisco, Rockwell, Siemens, AMD, AT&T, Lucent, Cabletron, Digital Island,
FireEye, Airgo, Clarity Wireless, Adaptive, Compaq, Qualcomm, HP
Technology Background
– Played pioneering roles in seminal industries: Server Computing, Networking,
Voice over IP, IPTV, Digital Consumer Electronics
– 26 US patents

3. Shop talk
• VC’s are ‘shallow’ people
• KISS
• Start at the beginning and top-down
• Don’t get sucked into arguments that
aren’t pertinent to the company
• Financials at 3 years aren’t $10M+
• Don’t try and ‘create competition’
• Don’t bluff. We all talk to each other.
• White board

4. Be prepared…
• Know your data, market, customers
• Bring your own dongle
• Expect your demo to fail
• How much time do you have?
• You’ve got less than 30 minutes…

5. 12 Slide Rule
• Exec Summary
• The Problem
• Market
• The Solution
• Business Model
• Technology
• IP/Regulatory
• Competition
• Team
• Financials
• Capital needs
• Exec Summary

6. The Breakdown
• Exec summary
– Begin and end with it
– It should tell the story
– Current status of the company
– Broad strokes
– Don’t let questions distract you

7. The lion and the mouse
• The Problem
– Go big or go home
– Needs to touch a lot of people
• Market
– Top Down
– Bottoms Up
– Is it growing?
– Who and where are the customers?

8. Bigger is better
• The Solution
– Must Have, Deadly Sins
– Disruptive
– Makes sense
– Can you do it?
• Business Model
– How do you make money? Breakeven?
– Do you understand sales & marketing?

9. Dogs pee to mark their turf. What do you do?
• IP
– Patents are like gold
– But is it fundamental?
– Crowded areas need FTO
• Regulatory
– What is needed here?
– It’s all about time and money

10. Find the white space
• Competition
– Know them well
– Your uniqueness needs to be very clear
– Three’s a crowd
• Team
– If you had great exits - move to slide #1
– Brands and experience
– Domain knowledge and depth
– More than 50% of the equation

11. Show me the money
• Financials
– Bottoms up creation
– Does it scale?
– VC’s love haircuts
• So what’s the Ask?
– What’s been raised? Any skin in the game?
– What are you going to do with it?
– Is it realistic?

12. Wrap it up
• Exec summary
– End where you began
• Concluding remarks
– How do you get to $1B revenue
– Summarize thoughts and concerns
– What info can you send?
– Who are the experts that you can connect?
– When is the expected follow-up?