Developing a pitch for investors with Ruben van Werven

1. DEVELOPING A PITCH FOR
INVESTORS
Ruben van Werven
Cass Business School
Ruben.van-Werven@city.ac.uk

2. MY QUESTION
How do entrepreneurs convince investors to fund
their startup?

3. MY APPROACH
Spending 3 months in an incubator in Amsterdam

4. PITCHING
‘Pitching is all about explaining this massive idea,
the big potential, new opportunities that might
arise, other markets that you might expand to…’

5. PITCHING
‘…if you think about it, nonsense right, to even talk
about that. I mean, why? That’s the way you have
to frame it to convince other people. It’s interesting
to invest in’

6. PITCH ACADEMY
Preparing the entrepreneurs for Demo Day

7. TENSIONS
• Describing the product without getting lost in
technicalities
• Reducing uncertainty without having much
evidence to show and without exaggerating
• Positioning the company without the use of
clichés

8. TENSION 1:
DESCRIBING THE PRODUCT…
Investors want to understand how the product
works

9. TENSION 1:
…WITHOUT GETTING LOST IN TECHNICALITIES
‘Best in industry templates – consisting of
processes, kpi definitions and connectors –
provide our cloud-based in-memory extension with
the data it needs to calculate and provide you with
the relevant information for business’

10. TENSION 1:
…WITHOUT GETTING LOST IN TECHNICALITIES
‘Because they can make the dog jump, they
somehow think that somebody wants a jumping
dog’
-Randy Komisar, entrepreneur and investor

11. SOLUTION:
FOCUS ON CUSTOMER BENEFITS
‘Big companies need business processes to
connect everything together to ensure constant
quality. And while these processes have helped
them to become successful, they create also a
large problem’

12. SOLUTION:
FOCUS ON CUSTOMER BENEFITS
‘…everything a manager needs to control business
performance. Let’s take a look behind the scenes.
The core of our product is a powerful, cloud-based
analytics engine. (…) It sounds complicated, but
we developed a way…’

13. TENSION 2:
REDUCING UNCERTAINTY…
Startups are uncertain investment opportunities,
which leads to a liability of newness

14. TENSION 2:
…WITHOUT HAVING EVIDENCE TO SHOW…

15. TENSION 3:
…AND WITHOUT EXAGGERATING

16. TENSION 3:
…AND WITHOUT EXAGGERATING
• Disruptive
• Innovative
• Revolutionary
• Breakthrough

17. SOLUTION:
GATHER ANY EVIDENCE YOU CAN FIND
Entrepreneur: ‘Shall I mention the 3,000 [people
on our waiting list]?’
Incubator manager: ‘I would do it, anything you
have in endorsements at this stage helps’.
Entrepreneur: ‘Yeah, it’s the only traction we
have…’

18. SOLUTION:
USE CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE
‘According to the Global Industry Analyst, the
global e-learning market will reach 107 billion
dollars by the end of next year’
‘[In Brazil], there are more than 300,000 private
clinics spread across the country, with 4.5 million
health professionals working at this places’

19. SOLUTION:
COMPARE YOUR STARTUP TO OTHER FIRMS
‘Our main competitors are legacy desktop systems
that have been around since the nineties’

20. TENSION 3:
POSITIONING THE COMPANY…
Companies perceived as legitimately distinct are
evaluated more positively

21. TENSION 3:
…WITHOUT USING CHEESY ANALOGIES
• Food delivery
• Flowers
• Laundry
• Grocery delivery
• Alcohol
• Medical marijuana
• Hot men who follow
your orders
• Lawn care
• Mortgage lending
The Uber of:

22. SOLUTION:
FIND A CLOSE TARGET FOR THE COMPARISON
‘Two companies that address a similar market as
we are (…) already do over a billion euros in
revenue’

23. SOLUTION:
…AND ADD A ‘SECRET SAUCE’
‘On our first fifty orders, we’ve proven to be seven
times faster than [our main competitor], where
delivery takes two weeks’

24. ANY QUESTIONS OR COMMENTS?