Investors invest in teams. Not ideas. Not technology. Or so they like to say. Why? Because what your idea looks like today is most likely not going to be what will make you successful, so you'll need to have the skillset and the mindset to persevere and adapt once your product hits the market and isn't an immediate hit. And no, employees, "advisors", and freelancers are not team members. Team members are the co-founders with equity - not your interns or employees. Do your team have the required skills needed? The ideal hypothetical startup team consists of a hustler/sales person, designer/product person and a developer/technology person. If you don't have a complete team yet, forget to raise funds before you are complete. If you have more than 4-5 co-founders, some of you are probably redundant - and good luck with explaining that they aren't you to investors. You've got to have a complete and relevant team for the challenge at hand before you can raise money (unless you've done this a couple of times before).
Unless you've founded successful startups in the past, the "Idea Pitch" is pretty much dead. Just having an idea is not enough in today's investment climate. (You might find someone willing to write you a cheque based on your idea alone, but you won't like the terms that cheque will come with.) You need to show the investor some sort of proof that you are able to create something instead of just talking, that your idea is in fact solving a real problem or need and that users or customers are responding to your product. In this day and age it has become an order of magnitude simpler and cheaper to build a rough prototype or Minimum Viable Product (MVP) and getting it infront of customers and users, firing off some marketing test rockets using your own resources. You need to be constantly talking to your users and customers. Investors today want to see your hard data. And the way you track this data is called metrics and analytics. You need to track and understand concepts like AARRR, MAU, CAC vs LTV, TAM, SAM, SOM, BMC, CPC, Churn Rate, Growth Rate, Engagement Rate, Cohort Analytics, WTF, ASAP. A rolling stone gathers no moss and a startup not rolling gathers no investors. The measure of your product’s engagement with its market is called "traction".
What is special here? What is your Secret Sauce? Do you have unique insights to a problem or a need? Are you the user and can demonstrate that there are others like you? Are you a domain expert in a niche? Are you one of very few in the world who could know or do this? Did you stumble upon a potential gold mine? Did you start with solving a real problem - not building a solution? Do most people laugh at your idea and call it stupid? Most good ideas are stupid ideas until they are not. Have you patented something? Conversely, have you checked that it isn't already patented? Have you seen what the future is can be like and you won't rest before you have created it? Are you truly driven? Are you unbundling incumbents? Are you creating a new market and stealing the customers from the old stalwarts? Have you found something that nobody else has found yet? Is now the right and only time? Have you discovered a sustainable engine of growth? You've got to have some treasure! (And by the way - if you can't show a clear path, at least theoretically and purely hypothetically, to $100mm annual recurring revenue, VCs can't invest in you, but a Business Angel might.)
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