KAT WEAVER’S WEBINAR TAKEAWAHS
“Fundraising can be a full-time job. Pitching is really a full-time job. Telling your story is hard. And doing it a in a concise and competent manner is actually even more difficult.”
“When I went to college, I wanted to major in biomed. But when I had my valuables stolen out of my gym locker, I invented my first patented products… It was then that I decided to change my major to entrepreneurship… I literally started selling my first product out of my dorm room.”
“I soon realized that when I was telling my story in a clear, concise and confident way that got people to listen. I won 22 of 23 pitches I entered, which amounted to six figures of capital alone to scale that company… Hundreds of founders messaged me, and they were asking how to they tell their story, raise money and pitch themselves... So after six years, I successfully sold and exited that first venture so I can now take Power to Pitch full time with the whole mission of helping founders get funded faster.”
5 Don’ts
Don’t treat the audience as if they were a customer
“You don't want to treat the audience as if they were a customer. You can raise money from an investor and from this Pitch Slam audience, even if they won't be an actual user of your product or service. But you do have to educate them on the problem and help guide them on the importance of why your product needs to exist, or even take up space on a shelf.”
Don’t Leave Out Your Story
“One of the most powerful and proprietary elements that you can share to remain memorable is one that includes your connection to the business… If you tried to be 100 percent technical and overshare tons of stats and data, rather than personalize your goals in the company, I promise you're going to be easily forgotten. I like to say that people remember transformation, not information…
“They'll remember the feeling they got from you more so than those statistics, even though they are important. But just be mindful that in a pitch, whether it's three minutes, five minutes, seven minutes, your story can be clear and concise enough in just three to six sentences… We don't need your degree, when you started the website, when you bought your first trademark, you just want to include parts of your story that are relevant to the audience, sponsors and or investors.”
Don’t Overshare
“No one has time for that. Oversharing, said another way is having the inability to be concise and my favorite term, word vomiting. So in a pitch, I like to say that less is more. If you try to talk too fast and get everything in, you're actually hurting yourself more than you think, because your audience is just trying to catch up with what the heck is coming out of your mouth…
“That's why I cannot urge founders enough to actually practice and write down the high-level things. You want to make sure that you get them out in a memorable manner. So it doesn't mean the entire life story of your product and why you're important. It should be a concise formulation of the why and what makes you different, or what makes you and the product we're pitching memorable.”
Don’t Use So Many Buzz Words
“It's almost laughable how much I see people using so many buzzwords. If I had $1 for every founder who told me, there's no one like us, we're different, premium, best in class, I would be on an island somewhere, and Jim would have to find someone else to give this presentation.
“So you're better off proving those things by giving facts, not just your opinion. You being the best is an opinion. You saying that, ‘Oh, our customers love us?’ Well, it's an opinion until you can prove it. You don't want to tell them that what you're offering is great. Again, this applies for the Pitch Slam, this applies for an investor, this applies to a retailer. You want to make them feel that what you have is great… So instead of the filler and fluff language, I highly urge you to quantify things and bring stats or numerical values to justify the success versus we're so great.”
Don’t Make an Overwhelming Deck
“I have helped founders raise millions of dollars without a deck, without investor ever even seeing one… And it's because the founders know how to be clear, concise, and speak to their audience. So for an opportunity like this where they require a high-level deck just to apply, you don't need 20-plus slides to validate you and the business. I guarantee you that no one is reading those long paragraphs.
“Remember, they had a ton of submissions. So how easy did you make it for them to consume what they need in that moment in a short period of time? If you were using less than 12-point font to squeeze things in, I guarantee that you can delete half of what you think you need. Bullets are plenty sufficient for someone to get the picture and move on… You should absolutely use bullets. I don't want to see a single period on any slide that I ever review.”
5 Dos
Do Research the Audience
“Do you know what success looks like for your audience? This is at any stage, in any opportunity, even at a networking event: Who is your audience at a networking event? At Power to Pitch, our investor partners expect our founders to research them and their fund for at least an hour before bothering to take up their time… For this [upcoming Naturally Chicago] Pitch Slam, do you know who or what type of judges are going to be on the panel? Are they investors, retailers, or organizations who have provided prizes?...
“I worked with a supplier diversity buyer at Walmart. And he said I can tell if I get on that call, and if someone doesn't know how many stores that we have for Walmart and where they're going to fit on the shelf, I know that call is going to be a waste of my time and I jump right off.”
Do Position the Entire Pitch as a Story
“You have to think if you have a storyline that jumps all over the place, it's going to be hard for your audience to follow, and they're going to lose interest. And remember, you're not special and that you're the first person to see that investor or judge for that Pitch Slam that day, or at that networking event, there's a ton of people pushing their own agenda…The order in which you say things is important. Leading with data versus building the relationship and highlighting the need before anything else sets the wrong tone…
“There's a psychological aspect to building a relationship with your audience and bringing them through certain information before others. Because a lot of people forget that these judges at this Pitch Slam, the investors, they are human, they are people too, they have bad days, they have good days, they're tired, they're hungry, there's other elements that are affecting them. And with your entire pitch as a whole story, I don't mean your life story. Remember, just two to six sentences for your entire storyline.”
Do Create Your Pitch Before Your Deck
“I am so passionate about figuring out your story, and the order in which you want to say things and communication plan before you bother to even touch a pitch deck. Remember, you can also raise money without a deck. I like to say that it should be your sidekick and not the hero, helping you share your story. It shouldn't tell your story for you.
“You don't want to make people read loads of texts on slides, so they're distracted from actually listening to you. And seriously, you don't need to a period to end your paragraphs in that long deck… If it's in terms of your market size, and you have a bunch of different stats to share, if it's more than five, no one's paying attention… Piece it together, then you create a full script from that in terms of how you want to put information out, because if you don't rehearse, practice that, it's going to be super noticeable, and unprofessional…
“I can't tell you how many people come to me and they say, ‘Oh, well, I have a really good deck.’ But they can't actually tell me what their business is without sharing their screen to share their deck. And that is a huge red flag. You should be able to verbalize what you do and what you have.”
Do Talk in Detail About the Use of Funds
“This applies for the Pitch Slam and their prizes, as well as any future investment. How confident did you make an investor feel that if they were to check you, they know where every dollar will benefit the company? Are you writing yourself a check for a big salary out of that? Because if they find out that you do that, they'll pass… And for the Pitch Slam again… you want to speak to the impact and use of the direct services for your business, because they're going to choose someone who understands this, and knows that the kind of success will bring them. You want to list amounts, names, and direction of where and what.”
Do Talk About Why You’re Qualified to Solve the Problem
“We see a lot of founders not giving themselves enough credit or time in a pitch to justify why they're the ones who take this business to the top. Any problems you've solved, experienced, managed are important, or what aspects of previous job experience are going to give you an edge. I don't care that you're not a serial entrepreneur. So what have you learned before? What have you done? What have you failed at that makes you better in this moment…
“It's another one of those buzzwords that you're revolutionizing the industry and doing all these amazing things and whatever. No one cares about that, those words and phrases. If you're one small, tiny product with no funding yet, it doesn't matter if you're saying those. So remember, like facts and statistics, any true experience is part of your qualifications to solving the problem and getting this to the next stages, regardless if you're a seriously successful founder with previous exits and all the other shiny kind of things on which you can put your name.”
