Notes on David Rose's TED Talk on How to Pitch to VCs

Things to Convey
Integrity, Passion, Experience, Knowledge, Skill, Leadership, Commitment, Vision, Realism, Coachability

Timeline of Your Presentation
The moment you walk into the door, you are going to take the VCs on an emotional ride. The overall arc of your presentation should start like a rocket. Use the first 10 - 30s to grab the attention. And then take them on a solid, steady, upward path right from the beginning to the end. Everything should be reinforcing this and it should get better, better and better. And in the end, boom! You should make them excited, ready to write you a check and throw money on you.

How to do this?

• Logical progression: Don't skip a step and go backwards. First, talk about what the market is? Why are you going to do X, Y, Z? And how are you going to that?
• Thing VCs know or can relate to: relate back to the world.
• Validators: outside references, sales, award, people has done before, beta test is doing well .
• Believable upsides: revenue in 5 years (a million, not a upside; a billion, not believable).
• Avoid downsides: 
• Things VCs know that are not true.
• Things they don't understand: need to make a leap to think about it. This will stop the flow of the presentation.
• Things make them think: need to take them step by step without being patronizing.
• Internal inconsistencies: e.g. numbers in sales.
• Typos, errors, unpreparedness.

What to Include in Your Presentation

• Company logo
• Quick 15-30s intro to grab the attention (a factor, something counterintuitive, a story, an experience)
• Quick business overview: 2 sentences (we built widgets for the X, Y, Z market; we sell service to help someone to do X) to put everything in context.
• Management team: past experience
• Market: size
• Product: what is it? A screenshot of the website or a canned demo (no live demo). Why people would buy it?
• Revenue (business) model: how are you going to make money on a per unit basis? Who are your customers?
• Strategic relationships: distribution, producing partner. This is good for validation. 
• Competition: even it is an old way of doing something. This allows the VCs to judge how you fit in all these and how you are special.
• Barrier to entry
• Financial overview: 1-2 years backwards and 3-5 years forward (5 may be too much, 4 is rational). Translate business model to a company model (how many units you are going to sell?). Give a picture of how the company will perform in the next few years.
• Use of proceeds
• Capital and valuation: who invested; did you invest yourself? your friends, family? What's the capital structure up until this point?
• Conclusion: take back to your logo and wrap up. This the final boom that should send the VCs to the space.