What You Feel: I don’t have the skills to raise capital

Perspective: As the leader of the company you need to develop skills that increase the likelihood that your company will get funded.  Investors are looking to see if the people to whom they will entrust their capital have the ability to succeed.

As we noted earlier, you are always on stage.  This is particularly true when it comes to investors.  Every single interaction – phone call, email, text message, meeting, interaction with staff – that is, with or in front of an investor is part of the data they will use to evaluate you as a leader.  There is no “off the record”  with investors and you must develop these skills.

• Clear and Concise. Everyone has heard they need the “elevator pitch”  that communicates the value of your business in a trip in an elevator.  The need to be clear and concise needs to permeate everything you do.  This applies to every audience, but even more so to investors.  You must be able to clearly and concisely explain the value of the business.  You also must be able to concisely answer questions.  When asked about a business model, your job is not to espouse the theory of business models, history of business models, properties of business models, etc. Short. To the point. If they want to know more, they will ask.  When your balloon is full, and you have been working on and thinking about the business non-stop, you are likely to have two reactions you must resist.  First to tell the investor everything about the issue and second to believe that the investor needs to know all the details to understand.  Imagine an alien landing on earth and stepping off a spaceship and asking “what is the profit margin on your software?”  Keep it simple.

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