TechCrunch nearly sat down with enterprise capitalist and Cleo Capital managing director Sarah Kunst at our newest Early Stage occasion final week. Kunst joined us to talk about making ready for elevating capital in immediately’s frenetic fundraising setting, digging into the gritty mechanics for the viewers.
Cleo Capital invests $500,000 to $1 million into early-stage startups, with portfolio firms that embrace mmhmm, Cameo and StyleSeat, amongst others.
Subsequent, a couple of favourite excerpts from the chat, beginning with Kunst’s notes on how you can make a killer pitch deck. Questions from the viewers helped direct the dialog, so I’ve tried to pick out themes that got here from y’all. We’ll additionally discover recommendation relating to incorporation, how you can discover a co-founder and when startups are too massive to affix an accelerator. (Quotes calmly edited for readability.)
Earlier than we get into key factors from the dialog, right here’s a rundown of hyperlinks that Kunst mentioned that I promised to incorporate on this publish:
The way to make an excellent pitch deck
Right here’s the factor about decks: Don’t be ugly. Don’t be ugly. Don’t be ugly.
The excellent news is it’s free and straightforward to make a non-ugly deck. It’s not 1999. You would not have to make use of clip artwork. You’ll be able to go to Canva. You’ll be able to go to loads of web sites that offer you very primary, very low cost — if not free — quite simple decks. Simply use one. It doesn’t have to alter the world. However it will possibly’t be ugly. No Comedian Sans font, except you’re a deeply ironic meme-driven firm. And even then, the percentages that that joke will land are infinitesimal. So, simply don’t have an unsightly deck.
What must be in your deck? Once more, this shall be a hyperlink that we’ll have later, however I really like for actually early-stage firms to make use of Man Kawasaki’s 10-slide pitch-deck format. Don’t ship me one thing that could be a video. Don’t ship me one thing that could be a one-pager. Don’t ship me one thing that’s 100-pager. [I want] 10 slides. Don’t make me obtain something. Hooked up as a PDF, use DocSend.
Make it actually, actually, actually easy and very easy to learn and digest who you’re, what the issue is [you are tackling], what the answer is, why you’re the proper group to do it, what your traction is, how a lot you’re elevating, [and] possibly a product slide. That’s it. That’s all I must know. I’ll take the assembly or I gained’t. And I say that on behalf of each different VC and angel on the earth.
This recommendation is obvious and may aid you keep away from some frequent pitfalls. Every part that she stated to not do, I promise she’s had despatched to her. Don’t be the following factor that will get deleted. Do what she stated.
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The way to discover a co-founder
Look again by everyone you already know. That is type of the identical [as] after we get to the family and friends a part of fundraising. Actually return and say, Who do I do know? Not, Who’re my finest mates, or who was at my marriage ceremony. Take a wider look. And take into consideration the intern you all the time sat subsequent to who was an engineer — what are they thus far? Your school roommate’s boyfriend or girlfriend who was an excellent compsci main. What are they doing now? Tweet about it, attain out on social media, attain out on LinkedIn. I’m obsessive about LinkedIn. When you hold your community updated, you’ll be able to actually go search who have you learnt who’s a pc scientist? First-degree, second-degree connections [are great]. Then simply attain out to folks and say, Hey, we’d love to talk with you.
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