When pitching your business to potential investors, too much exuberance can be a bad thing. While passion and enthusiasm are important, investors are looking for evidence of how competent and trustworthy you are. Thorough research and preparation is key to presenting a compelling pitch that shows you understand the market and have realistic expectations for growth. Here, Scarlett Cook shares a guide to structuring your pitch with some top tips for avoiding the common mistakes that signal ov...

Combine the reach of equity crowdfunding with the power of video and you have the ideal opportunity to attract potential investors with an engaging, memorable and compelling video pitch. The additional upfront cost of creating a good campaign video "can pay off big time," says Bill Clark, as campaigns featuring videos raise more than twice the funds of campaigns without them. Here, he shares some top tips for creating a video pitch that sparks the imagination, highlights potential for growth, an...

For your pitch deck to stand out among the hundreds doing the rounds every year, it needs to clearly articulate why your startup offers a great opportunity for potential investors. While you want your presentation to be engaging and persuasive, it also needs to be honest and authentic. And that means any assumptions you make must be backed by solid market research and verifiable data. To help you bulletproof your deck, Christoph Janz shares here a few "things you need to keep in mind when you pr...

Despite outperforming their male counterparts, the odds are stacked against most female founders when it comes to raising venture capital funding. The fundraising process can be gruelling for any entrepreneur. And, in a male-dominated industry, women also face a potential minefield of gender stereotyping and biased attitudes. When pitching to investors, they're often held to different standards than their male counterparts and are treated differently or asked different questions. Some inves...

Raising finance through the traditional venture capital route can be a gruelling process and many startups opt for crowdfunding instead. The most common form of crowdfunding is reward-based, in which you raise funds by offering people your new product, a gift or a discount in exchange for their contribution. With equity crowdfunding however, you raise capital by offering investors part of your company's equity in exchange for their investment. And equity crowdfunding can work for both early...

Proving to VCs that your business is worth investing in can be a daunting process. Apart from being able to deliver a persuasive presentation with a carefully crafted pitch deck, you also need to be prepared for some tough questions. Some of the most important questions are the ones that don't get asked aloud and knowing what investors may be thinking about during your pitch will help you answer them proactively. Here, Larry Kim shares the questions Parul Singh—a principal at the venture ca...

Startups with high growth potential spend money faster than they can make it, which means early stage founders have to put a lot of time and effort into seeking finance. Every year thousands of entrepreneurs turn to venture capital (VC) firms, yet raising money from VCs is a challenging process and the odds of success are very low. "But if it provides any consolation, it's often as hard for VCs to say "no" as it is for founders to hear it," says Kjartan Rist. Here, he shares the reasons a VC may...

Startup fundraising is notoriously difficult and despite the months of time and effort they put into preparing for each gruelling round of investor pitches, very few startups secure venture capital investment. In recent years however, equity crowdfunding has emerged as a viable alternative. Unlike rewards-based crowdfunding, which offers people an incentive in exchange for their pledge, equity crowdfunding allows startups to raise funds by asking for relatively small amounts of money from a larg...

Pitching your business to potential investors can be a gruelling process. You need to create a well-crafted pitch deck that captures your audience's attention with a compelling narrative that demonstrates your strengths as a business. And you need to be prepared to answer some tough questions. Business growth expert Scott Duffy has years of experience, both as an investor and as an entrepreneur raising funding. In this excerpt from his book Breakthrough, he shares some top tips on how to av...

Crafting a compelling pitch deck and preparing to answer tough questions from venture capitalists (VCs) can be daunting for any founder. And while you're focusing on what VCs are looking for in a startup, it's easy to forget that the founder-investor relationship is a two-way street. A pitch session isn't just about getting investors excited about your business and keen to be a part of it. It's also an opportunity for VCs "to make a case for why you should trust them or give them a cut of your b...