Edith Yeung, a general partner at Race Capital, outlines strategies for effectively pitching a startup, emphasizing the importance of traction and clear communication. Founders should focus on key elements such as their product, market size, team, and competition during their pitch. Post-pitch, it's crucial to follow up promptly with investors, sharing relevant information and expressing gratitude.

1. How to Pitch Your
Startup
Edith Yeung
November 2020

2. Let’s Make Startup Pitching Great Again

3. Edith Yeung
Edith is a General Partner at Race Capital - an early-stage Silicon Valley venture capital fund
focusing on investing in data infrastructure and enterprise software. She has invested in over 50
startups including Agora.io (Nasdaq: API), Lightyear/Stellar (valued $1.2B), Silk Labs (acquired by
Apple), Chirp (acquired by Apple), Fleksy (acquired by Pinterest), Human (acquired by Mapbox),
Solana, Oasis Labs, Hooked, DayDayCook, AISense, and many more.
Prior to Race Capital, Edith was a partner at 500 Startups, the world's most active early-stage fund
and incubator invested in Twilio, Credit Karma, Grab, and 2000 more companies. Before 500,
Edith was the general manager at Dolphin Browser, a Sequoia-backed mobile browser with over
150 million installs worldwide. Edith also worked with many Fortune 500 companies such as
Siebel, AMS, AT&T Wireless, and Autodesk. She frequently speaks on China and Silicon Valley
technology and investment landscape. She is also a frequent guest lecturer at Berkeley and
Stanford and commentator on BBC, CNBC, Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, SCMP, Techcrunch,
etc.
Edith Yeung | @edithyeung | edith.co

4. What do investors want?

9. What do founders want?

13. Pitching is just the first date.

16. An investor will not, cannot, and would never
invest in you the first time they meet you.

18. What should a founder say in the first pitch?

19. What are you building?

21. What is the problem?

23. How does your product work?

25. What is the traction?

27. How do you make money?

29. Who is on the team?

31. Who are your competitors?

33. During the Pitch…
• Traction, traction, traction
–Revenue
–# of Downloads
–# of MAU / DAU
–Major Customers or
Partnerships
• Product Demo
• Market Size
• Pain Point
• Product
• Team (including advisors or
early investors)
• Technology / IP
• Business model
• Competition
• Market trends
• Government regulations
@edithyeung

34. What do you want to show?

36. Confident

37. Confident

38. Competent

39. Confident

40. Concise and Clear

42. What NOT to do in your
first pitch?
@edithyeung

47. What should you ask a potential investor?

48. Questions for Investors
• How many investments have you done in the past 12 months
• How many companies have you invested in so far
• Have you invested in this industry before
• What is your decision making process
• What is your due diligence process
• How big is your fund
• Do you do follow on investment
• What kind of value do you bring to your portfolio companies
@edithyeung

49. What to do after your first pitch?

50. After your pitch…
• Email follow up within 12 hours
–Say Thank YOU
–Deck
–Current traction
–Team
–Action items
–Your ask
–Ask for follow up phone call or meeting
@edithyeung

51. @edithyeung

52. @edithyeung

53. • Follow me on Twitter @edithyeung
• Join my weekly funding newsletter https://
www.silicon.news/
• Book office hours on FoundersHK https://
www.foundershk.com/
Want more?