This document provides guidance for startups on fundraising, pitching to investors, and life lessons. It outlines the essential elements for a successful fundraising presentation, including an elevator pitch, executive summary, PowerPoint, prototype or demo, and financial projections. For the pitch itself, the goals are to give investors an overview, excite them about the company/idea/product, and get them to take the next step. Key slides to include are introducing the problem and solution, demonstrating the product, outlining the market opportunity and competition, highlighting the team's competitive advantages, and reviewing risks, financial projections, and future milestones. Some life lessons emphasized are focusing on passion, surrounding yourself with smart people, listening more than talking, keeping it simple

1. MissionKonnect
Investor Relations
and a few Life Lessons
Dr. Tony Ratliff
Twitter = @drtonyratliff

2. Entrepreneurship is
Awesome!
1. Change the World,
2. Build something of lasting
value,
3. Improve the lives of your
customers,
4. Hopefully make lots of money
doing it.

3. “Being an Angel
Investor is like
being a Life Guard
at the swimming
pool.”
-Dr. Tony Ratliff

4. “Most Startups FAIL from a lack of
Customers, not cool stuff.”

5. Super Successful Startups
• Obsessed with the Quality of the
product/experience.
• Obsessed with working with the best talent.
• Can explain the vision in a few clear words.
• Generate revenue very early on.
• Keep expenses low.
• Make something a small number of users really
love.
• They are focused on growth, but grow
organically.

6. Investor Relations

7. ESSENTIALS FOR
FUNDRAISING
-Elevator Pitch
-Executive Summary
-PowerPoint Presentation
-Prototype or a Demo
-Financial Models/Projections

8. THE PITCH
Three Goals of the Pitch:
1. to give investors and overview,
2. to get them excited about your
company, team
idea, product
& solution,
3. get them to take the next step.

9. BEFORE THE PITCH
You need to know a few things...
• How much time do you get?
• What other investments have these
investors made?
• What type of investors are you pitching
to?
• How should you dress?
• Will there be a question and answer
session?

10. SLIDE #1 - INTRO
• Brief background information.
• Tell us who you are, what you do and
why you do...in as few words as
possible.
• Tell us your “story” ...leave out the
boring parts.
• How did you discover the problem?

11. SLIDE #2 - TEAM
• Talk about the team and tell us why
you’ve assembled this team.
• Highlight any expertise in the area.
• A list of advisors works well here.
• Why are you the right people to do
this?

12. SLIDE #3 - PROBLEM
• What Problem do you solve?
• Who has the Problem?
• How many people have this
Problem?

13. SLIDE #4 - SOLUTION
• What’s your Solution?
• Why is it important to the Customer?
• Your goal is to get people emotionally
connected to the problem and wanting a
solution?
• Does your customer think your solution is
important?
• Are your customers willing to pay for your
solution?

14. SLIDE #5 - DEMO
• Let us touch and feel your product? A if
you don’t have a product - a short
demo or screen shots work well.
• Make sure your demo doesn’t drag on
and on and on.
• We don’t need to understand all the
features or code.
• We want it to be simple and work.

15. SLIDE #6 - OPPORTUNITY
• What’s the Opportunity? Explain your
Marketing Strategy and the Size of Your
Market?
• Your idea is “useless” if know one “uses” it.
• What is the size of your Market (size
matters)?
• What is your marketing plan?
• What is your customer acquisition cost?

16. SLIDE #7 - COMPETITION
• Who’s your Competition and why
do they matter?
• How many competitors are in the
space?
• Which ones are irrelevant?
• Everyone has competition!

17. SLIDE #8 - COMPETITIVE
ADVANTAGE
•
•
•
•
What’s your Competitive Advantage?
Do you have a secret sauce?
Do you have any patents or IP?
How will you out-execute your
competition?
• How are you going to get users?

18. SLIDE #9 - RISKS
• Successful people understand their strengths
and their weaknesses.
• Help us understand the risks involved with
moving the company forward.
• Everyone in the room is asking themselves
these questions:
– What’s holding me back from writing these
guys a check right now?
– Will this idea really work?
– Does this team have the skills to pull it off?

19. SLIDE #10 - FINANCIALS
• Show us the Financials - We know
they are wrong, but show them to us
anyway.
• Give us your best guest and use
conservative numbers.
• Be realistic. Under Promise, Over
Deliver.
• What will it take to double or triple

20. SLIDE #11 - STATUS AND
FUTURE MILESTONES
• Let us know what’s happened up until this
point.
• Don’t be afraid to tell us what’s gone right and
what’s gone wrong.
• We know startups pivot – that just means your
learning something.
• Talk about your progress and tell us about any
wins.
• Tell us what your customers are saying.

21. SLIDE #12 CLOSING SLIDE
• Logo
• Website
• Email
• Contact Information.
(Always end with your information)

22. QUICK PITCH BONUS
SLIDE
• Here’s a big problem in the
world.
• Here’s an idea for a machine
that I invented to solve that
problem.
• Here are the materials I need
to build and grow that
machine.
• Here are the people that I need
to put those materials
together.

23. A few Life Lessons

24. “Failing is Learning as long as you don’t
keep repeating the same mistakes.”

25. “Do something that you are really
Passionate About. If not, find
something else to do.”

26. Research shows that the
happiest people aren’t lying on a
beach somewhere. Instead, they
are happiest when they are
caught up in something
challenging, using their gifts.

27. “You are only as smart as the people
you associate with.”

28. “Social skills are more important than
technical skills….most of the time.”

29. Key Social Skills
Smile.
Be Honest.
Be Transparent.
Be Helpful.
Listen more, talk less.
Be You.
Don’t be a Dick.

30. “Simplicity is actually quite
complicated.”

31. “Try not to become a man of success, but rather
try to become a man of value.”
- Albert Einstein

32. “Take care of your customers, if
not, someone else will.”

33. “Life Begins at the End of your
Comfort Zone.”

34. Dr. Tony Ratliff
@drtonyratliff