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Business model design

Why Growth? Pitchfest Workshops at New Inc.

November 6, 2015

What’s more fun than working with a bunch of world changing tech founders who see themselves as future unicorns?

Working with artist entrepreneurs at New Inc.

In module 1 of a Pitchfest Workshop series, we covered why you might want to grow big, and have huge scale, as an exercise in imagining your impact.

We are here:  Module 1: Why Growth

Module 2: Storyline (and business model help)

Module 3: Pitch Practice, Feedback, Development

Pitchfest will help you create a growth narrative for your company. The goal of the workshop: construct your company narrative to get useful and constructive feedback from growth investors. We’re focused on the shortest story, the “short deck.” You’ll need a longer deck if you are actually pursuing investors.

You may decide to pursue a fast growth model, or you may decide to pursue more of a steady state plan for generating revenue – but at least you will have invested time to understand the potential for your business.

Prework: Make sure you have recently spoken to at least 10 potential customers before coming to the Pitchfest to present your idea.

Pitch Practice: 2 minutes each, no visual aids.

Why Growth?

Impact. Scale. Envisioning Big Outcomes. If it is clear enough and compelling enough AND BIG ENOUGH it will attract the SCALE AND IMPACT-SEEKING people and resources (VCs, angels, future partners and team members)

What does it mean to seek a 10x return?

My current revenues of _______ would have to grow to ____________ in 5 years to be considered worthy of a venture capital investment.

Trick question – why?

Angel Targeted Returns 5 to 10 times $ in 4 to 8 years

Multiple
 

 

Years to Exit

 5x 6x 7x 8x 9x 10x
4 50% 57% 64 68 73% 78%
5 38% 43 48 55 55 58%
6 31% 35 38 44 66 47%
7 26% 29 32 37 37 39%
8 25% 25 28 30 32 33%

For some early angels in Facebook, returns = 62,000%

What % of startups fail? ___________

Why Not Growth?
Control. Creative Control. Ownership Stake. Lifestyle.

Smaller market size – but compelling.

Rich vs. King.

Trade-Off by Noam Wasserman at HBR.org

The Founder’s Dilemma at HBR.org.

 

Prep for Next Time:

Purpose. Know why you are driven to do this.

Motivation. Know what drives you? Are you trying to control your own destiny? Or dominate the world? Create a dent in the universe?

Further orientation:

Spend time going over VC classic recommendations for how to build a pitch deck:

Sequoia Cooley Co Polaris New York Angels Criteria

For lots of examples PitchEnvy The exact Pitch Strategy I’ve used to Raise $125 MM since 2011.

1. Choose a story line arc.
Module 2 is storyline for the pitch – covering the personal motivation/inspiration to start the company, the current market need, the vision for growth, the potential financial outcome.
If you haven’t seen Kurt Vonnegut’s failed master’s thesis – he outlines the different storylines perfectly. For a startup pitch – the Creation/Cinderella arc works well, but also consider the “Man in Hole” storyline – more room to be compelling if you had a story of struggle. No Kafka!
Vonnegut on Open Culture.
2. Assemble any unknown data for your pitch.
Here are examples of VC recommendations for pitches – you don’t have to follow these but they are showing you what investors tend to look for. Not all investors are the same – and in a first meeting you are better off intriguing them than you are having every question answered.
What you’ll need in your story –
_You, your origin/background story, your motivation. (Spear in the chest moment).
_The huge, pressing problem that people are suffering from today.
_The size of that first market – your customer segment / target / nice.
_How big the market could be eventually.
_Your extraordinary solution.
_Your secret sauce.
(And have as backup competitive difference, financial projections, and business model hypotheses for how this idea will make an investor a 10x+ return in 5 years).
3. Create your storyline for a verbal 1-2 minute pitch.
We’re practicing for demo day – but this is the pitch you would make before you start showing the demo, or along side the demo. But I recommend developing a pitch that would work with just your words, so that you’ll be able to make a compelling intro to your business anywhere, in any circumstance.
You don’t seem like a shy crowd so just jump in, it will be fun and we an workshop any questions next week.