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How To Successfully Pitch Angel Investors

Last week Innovation Bay Angels met for their quarterly dinner to hear pitches from a chosen few entrepreneurs. This was the fourth dinner of the year, a year in which we’ve assessed over 50 Australian companies and by the end of the evening we had heard live pitches from 14 entrepreneurs seeking angel investment this year.

As active angel investors (the group has invested multi millions of dollars to date), we see a lot of deals in different contexts and one thing we value above all is a quality pitch from entrepreneurs who are passionate and who have done their homework on their industry.

Our modus has been to ask entrepreneurs to submit an initial 90-second video pitch. That may not seem like a lot of time, but remember that most television ads only run for 29 seconds!

Those entrepreneurs who are chosen to actually present to the group at the quarterly dinners are given six minutes to pitch and may answer questions from the room for another six minutes.

Why all these time constraints and formats?

We’ve tried the unstructured, open ended approach and it simply does not work. Anyone can bang together a business plan or executive summary on a word processor and make it look good – but getting a message across via video in 90 seconds takes skill.

Standing in front of a room of 40 successful businesspeople and selling a business in six minutes takes further skill, discipline and practice.

Besides, investors have only so much bandwidth to hear from an individual entrepreneur and rattling on for 15 – 20 minutes won’t solidify your investment case, nor would it be fair on others who also want to garner the group’s attention.

What should your video be aiming to achieve?

One of the best comments made recently by one of our angels sums this up succintly:

“Short, sharp, punchy. Gives enough to establish credentials. There is enough in this quick summary to make me want to found our more.”

The videos we receive are placed on a private forum and members of the group are able to ask questions of the entrepreneurs who submitted them, and they have the ability to respond. From these comments (for the last round there were well over 300 comments) and the questions asked at the dinners, we’ve collated a set of Frequently Asked Questions, which I’ve set out below.

Entrepreneurs should know the answers to as many of these as possible and while they may not be able to cover off on each and every one in their videos, we would expect them to do so by the time they finish their six minute pitch.

THE ANGEL FAQs

PROBLEM/SOLUTION
How big is the problem you are trying to solve

What is your core value proposition

MARKET/CUSTOMERS
What is your customer make up – geographically and by industry

What is the return on investment (ROI) for customers

Can you give a bottom up outline of the market size rather than “a % of a $bn market”

How do you define your target segment, how many potential customers are there in this segment and what are they willing to pay for your product or service

What is the cost to acquire customers

If you are initially targeting a niche of early adopters, how will you get across to mass market adoption

Are there any regulatory or entrenched business practice barriers you need to overcome

Is there something about your space that means we need a local solution rather than a modified US solution

Are there any analogies you can use to explain your product, eg “the Farmville of Health Education” or “Groupon meets Zynga”

If you are initially targeting a niche of early adopters, how will you get across to mass market adoption

Are there any regulatory or entrenched business practice barriers you need to overcome

COMPETITION
What is your sustainable competitive advantage

Which are your major competitors and what do you do different

Not for everyone but: why are you best placed to win in this torturously overcrowded and undifferentiated space

While your product may in fact be different from others in the market, how do you get around the perception that it is the same as other products out there

TEAM/THE BUSINESS
Who owns the IP

Who will be on the team for executing

What are your views on the LeanStartup Model

What are the backgrounds of the founders

What is your backstory – how did you come to tackle this problem/market

Does your product exist already – if so, will you be able to demo it

BUSINESS MODEL
Outline some key figures – revenue predictions, staff

How do you make money, what is your revenue model

What is your distribution strategy

Are revenues primarily from product or services. How will that change in the future.

What are your plans for scaling the business (what are the requirements and obstacles to scale)

How are/will you handle the huge amounts of data that you need to gather

THE FUNDING NEED
How will you spend the money

What your investors should contribute in addition to money

THE DEAL
How much equity are you offering to Angels

What will equity split be

EXIT STRATEGY
What’s your exit strategy

One final point – don’t go asking investors to sign a non disclosure agreement. You’ll likely get short shrift.

I hope these pointers assist you in your quest for funding and good luck growing your businesses!

Tags: Angel Investing, angels, Innovation Bay

Techcrunch Disrupt: Livestreaming (Conference Over)

Tags: Techcrunch Disrupt

Getting Up To Speed With Augmented Reality

If you haven’t seen the promise of Augmented Reality for marketing purposes, this video from Sky’s Technology Unplugged Show will get you up to speed:

Tags: Sky, Technology Unplugged

Apple’s iPad: Changing Business Models from April 3rd…

This is a game changer:

If you haven’t factored this into your business yet, you’re already on the endangered list!

Tags: Apple, iPad

Four People Is All It Takes To Change The World

I have a huge amount of respect for Robert Scoble. His intellect, his dedication to his task of curating trends and his personable approach make him a stand out in the Silicon Valley community…, no wider than that: globally!

That’s why I wanted to share with you his talk at Stanford University last month. In it he talks about how people like Scott Monty are humanizing the brands they work with, how new Zappos employees are forced to tweet to connect them to their brand and the concept of doubling pennies.

He finishes in true Scoble style with an understated truism – we all have a burning desire not to connect with thousands of ‘friends’ that we hardly know, but with just four people, the right four people…and that is all it takes to change the world, just four connected, passionate people.

Connect the dots – the right four people who have cracked the formula for building doubling pennies – an extremely powerful combination.

Definitely worth watching:

Tags: doubling pennies, Robert Scoble, Scott Monty, Stanford University

The History of Innovation: Technology is Greatest Ponzi

Link to site

Tags: Long Now Foundation, Ponzi, Sander van der Leeuw

US Leads The Way With New Office For Entrepreneurship & Innovation

Bloomberg reports that the US Commerce Department is in the process of establishing a new Office of Entrepreneurship and Innovation to help entrepreneurs transform ideas into companies.

This office, according to Commerce Secretary Gary Locke, will help fledgling business owners get training, credit and access to government research, in a bid to encourage the ‘right kind’ of risks by business leaders.

The office will be geared toward the first step in the business cycle: moving an idea from somebody’s imagination or from a research lab into a business plan. What we need to do is get better at connecting the great ideas to the great company builders.

Bloomberg notes that this plan is picking up the ball from Barack Obama’s comments a few days ago that new technologies and businesses are the key to re-establishing economic growth…The administration will try to ‘catalyze breakthrough’ technologies.

What I find really interesting here is that this rhetoric echoes the Australians who announced in May that they would be creating a Commercialisation Institute. I put forward a paper in July on how I believe such an initiative can optimally assist entrepreneurs and boost innovation.

However, we are still waiting to get a feel from Canberra that something is actually being done beyond the rhetoric. I hope that this US initiative is able to achieve a catalytic breakthrough in Australia too by showing up their tardiness in getting stuff done!

The other interesting echo is that Gary Locke points to the United States’ failure in capitalizing on its solar technologies. Similarly, Australia was a world leader in this area with technology developed in Sydney. Today this is being commercialised in China. Carpe diem, my friends!

Tags: Commonwealth Commercialisation Institute, Office for Entrepreneurship & innovation

Grassroots, open source, replicable 3-d printing: RepRap

I’ve been enjoying reading Cory Doctorow’s latest novel, Makers, which tracks the growth of a grassroots 3-d printing revolution in a post-GFC-like world. You can follow the novel in parts here.

A real life example is the RepRap movement. A group of people have come together to develop an open source 3-d printer that can replicate itself. Check out the video below:

RepRap from Adrian Bowyer on Vimeo.

Tags: 3-d printing, Cory Doctorow, Makers, RepRap

Australian Venture Capital: Super Shake Up

BusinessWeek has a great profile piece on prolific early stage venture capitalist, Josh Kopelman of US firm First Round Capital:  Super Angels Shake Up Venture Capital. The article’s take is to delve into the world of investors who are running counter to the cycle. While everyone else is running away from risk, these guys are running into the fire and making investments.

A core premise behind the piece is that in an IPO and acquisition-starved market, the math of billion dollar VC funds doesn’t add up. Enter the traditional, venture capital as cottage industry style fund – smaller, leaner, more agile and definitely more entrepreneurial, similar in nature to the people it invests in and both able to identify with and nuture successful entrpreneurs.

It’s a good article and well worth the read.

I am witnessing somewhat of a shake up in the VC industry in Australia at the moment as well. Together with two partners, I’ve been running Innovation Bay since November 2003. At the time I was an early stage VC and there were a number of other players in the market. Over the next 5 and a half years though, the VC industry has gone through some major contractions. The number of active VCs has totally shrunk, yet the demand for capital and savvy advice has continued to rocket.

Fast forward to mid 2009. Innovation Bay is hosting a new format event on the 9th June. We are putting on an Angel Dinner for a select subset of our members, many of whom easily fall within the BusinessWeek rubric of ‘super angels’.

We are inviting along two technology entrepreneurs to pitch their ventures. I’ve been truly amazed at the number and talent of the entrepreneurs who have approached us with a view to being chosen. The hardest part for me is that I’d love to have them all along, but alas we have to limit the numbers for this event.

The demand, though, does point to a real need in Australia and I am hopeful that the newly announced Commonwealth Commercialisation Institute will play a major role in satisfying this demand.

I am also going to be a judge in a pitching competition for creative projects called Back My Project. It is part of the Creative Sydney festival of ideas and has a pool of cash behind it. Come along to the MCA on the 4th June if you are in Sydney – it will be loads of fun. It is all part of Vivid Sydney, the “biggest international music and light festival in the Southern Hemisphere”!

Tags: Australia, Commonwealth Commercialisation Institute, Venture Capital

Restoring Liquidity in the Australian Venture Capital Industry: NVCA 4 Pillars Approach

I endorse the recommendations made by the US National Venture Capital Association to address the capital markets crisis for venture-backed companies in the United States and wish to further extend those recommendations to apply specifically to Australia.

Over the course of the past ten years the number of initial public offerings (IPOs) by venture-backed companies has seriously declined. A key form of exit for venture investors, IPOs have all but dried up with very few serious listings. In fact, in the US only six such companies entered the public markets in 2008, with none in Australia.

The contribution of venture-backed companies to economic growth is proven, and a concerted effort is needed by a range of participants in the capital markets ecosystem in order to restore a viable IPO environment. A change in approach by both the private sector and government is essential.

It is critical to both Australia’s competitiveness and the country’s economic recovery to boost the venture-backed IPO market. One can extrapolate that the same would apply to Australia when considering the figures in a report to be released in early May by Global Insight that estimates that in 2008 public companies that were once venture-backed accounted for more than 12 million U.S. jobs and $2.9 trillion in revenues, which equates to 21 percent of U.S. GDP. Further, it is estimated that 92 percent of job growth at these companies occurs once the company enters the public markets.

As Mark Heesen, the president of the NVCA says, “This capital markets issue is not just a venture capital industry problem; it is a U.S. economic concern. If America wants to maintain its economic leadership and continue to grow and innovate, we must re-invigorate the public markets and strive towards healthier IPO levels similar to that which our country enjoyed in the 1980s and 1990s. Without this activity, we can expect job growth to disappear over time.”

In Australia this is a more pointed issue. Much of the country’s core intellectual property finds itself being commercialised offshore with minimal economic, environmental or social benefit back to Australia. Without a viable Australian IPO market, there is little chance that there will be a comparable venture capital ecosystem in place and much of the country’s incredible research will either be stillborn or shift offshore.

I agree wholeheartedly with the NVCA’s Four Pillar Plan as set out below and call on my Australian colleagues to rally around formulating a uniquely Australian solution to the crisis faced here.

The NVCA Four Pillar Plan to Restore the Venture-Backed IPO Market
At the core of the issue is a recognition that today’s market environment is challenging with respect to the issuance of small cap IPOs. There are multiple reasons as to why this is the case including the high costs of going public, the constituents involved in the process, and the restrictions placed on potential public companies. The NVCA recommendations, which seek to address these issues, comprise four categories or pillars, two which focus on changing behavior in the venture capital market and two which involve the government exploring policies conducive to venture-backed IPOs.

Pillar I: Ecosystem Partners
Within the last decade, venture-backed companies have been faced with fewer choices as it relates to investment banks and accounting firms that will assist in the IPO process. While the major investment banks continue to operate, the “four horsemen” boutique investment banks of the 1990s (Alex Brown, Hambrecht & Quist, Montgomery Securities, and Robertson Stephens), which specialized in IPOs of venture-backed companies, no longer exist. Further, the fall of Arthur Andersen and the resulting pressure placed on the Big Four accounting firms has, in many markets, left a void in terms of quality auditing services available for these smaller companies.

Against this backdrop, the NVCA believes that the venture capital industry must do more to promote alternative ecosystem partners while engaging with existing members to identify ways to better serve the needs of emerging growth companies. The Association has begun to engage in talks with boutique and major investment banks as well as the Big Four and other public accounting firms about how they can also better serve the needs of small cap companies. The NVCA also intends to encourage the use of a broader array of service providers such as the “Global Six” including Deloitte LLP, Ernst & Young LLP, Grant Thornton LLP, KPMG LLP, PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP and BDO Seidman LLP.

Pillar II: Enhanced Liquidity Paths
There is consensus among many within the capital markets ecosystem that the distribution system that connects sellers and buyers of venture-backed company new issues is broken. There are many drivers behind this disconnect including mismatched expectations in terms of issue size, the lack of sell side analysts, and the propensity of hedge funds to buy and sell stock quickly. All of these factors contribute to a lack of an adequate distribution channel and considerable post-IPO market volatility.

To offer small venture-backed companies an enhanced distribution system for the sale of initial stock, the NVCA endorses concepts such as Inside Venture which is a private market platform that connects qualified companies that intend to IPO within 18 months with pre-screened cross-over investors. These buyers commit to buy and hold these stocks for the long term. Other providers with similar models include Portal Alliance (NASDAQ), SecondMarket and Xchange. Additionally, the NVCA will help raise awareness about pro-active M&A roll up strategies of smaller portfolio companies to achieve IPO critical mass and global alternatives to the U.S. public markets.

Pillar III: Tax Incentives
The NVCA has long asserted that the government must support a tax structure that fosters capital formation and rewards long term measured risk taking. To support a more vibrant IPO market, the U.S. must maintain tax policies that have been proven to encourage venture capital investment so that the pipeline of promising IPOs is as robust as possible. Further, Congress should consider adopting new tax incentives which would stimulate IPOs, at least in the short term.

The NVCA will continue to advocate strongly for a capital gains tax rate that is globally competitive and preserves a meaningful differential from the ordinary income rate. The Association asserts that venture capitalists who are successful in building new companies should continue to be taxed at a capital gains rate for any carried interest that is earned over the long term. The Association also intends to explore the possibility of a one time tax incentive for buyers and holders of IPOs as well as increasing the holding rate for capital gains status to two or more years.

Pillar IV: Regulatory Review
From a regulatory perspective, the last decade has been characterized by a series of broad sweeping regulations aimed at curbing serious abuses within the financial system but fraught with unintended consequences for small pre-public and public companies. From Sarbanes Oxley (SOX) to the Global Settlement to Reg FD, small venture-backed companies have been faced with costly compliance and increasing obstacles to enter the public markets as a result of regulations intended for larger multi-national corporations. The NVCA strongly supports regulation and protecting investors where necessary but does not support a “one-size-fits-all” regulatory approach.

To wit, the NVCA will advocate for a full systematic review by the Securities and Exchange Commission of recent regulations which impact small cap companies. This review would include interpretations of SOX, pre-IPO financial reporting requirements, the separation of analyst and investment banking functions, and private placement requirements. There are opportunities within existing regulations to tier compliance so as not to overburden emerging growth pre-public and public companies at a time when they need support from the government, their auditors, and the markets.

“We are optimistic that the recommendations included in the Four Pillar Plan will contribute to a more vibrant IPO market for venture-backed companies over the long term,” concluded Doll. “The NVCA remains committed to fostering an environment that fuels significant economic growth and job creation. The adoption of our recommendations is a critical element of our country’s continued global leadership and ability to bring high growth, innovative public companies to market.”

Tags: ASX, NVCA