As a founder or entrepreneur, learning how to pitch is key to building your business. But people still make a lot of common mistakes when it comes to the pitch. If you are currently raising capital, you need to listen to this episode.

Join Elliot Begoun as he talks to the Founder of Power to Pitch, Kat Weaver. Learn all the tips and tricks Kat teaches her clients when it comes to pitches. Remember, the best pitches aren’t rapid-fire interviews. They’re collaborative discussions. Tune in and discover how to win over your investors today!

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Listen to the podcast here

Kat Weaver – Power To Pitch

This is another episode of TIG Talks. Before I turn it over to Kat, I’ll say that we’re going to have a great conversation about pitching and the craft and the art of pitching and making a good case for your business. We started this TIG Collective for two primary purposes. The first is this business is hard. If you’re an entrepreneur in this space, trying to navigate these waters alone is all but impossible. The TIG Collective offers you as an entrepreneur the opportunity to be surrounded by over 50 amazing subject matter experts who are truly interested in helping you succeed.

It works very simply. All you do is sign your regular advisor agreement and issue your regular advisor shares, but all of that is between you and the collective. The collective issues or signs a similar agreement with the advisor. Each advisor participates in a pro-rata portion of all the aggregate shares that are depositing the collective so that they’re motivated and incented to work for you and help you succeed.

The other benefit and the other purpose of the TIG Collective are to make our boardrooms more representative of the communities that we serve. The reality is if you look across our industry in a more mature brand, the boards look a lot like me, middle-aged White guys. We don’t have the appropriate representation of women, BIPOC, and LGBTQ+ board members. The TIG Collective is going to do its part to change that in concert with our partnership with Women on Boards, JEDI Collaborative, New Hope, and others.

We hope to foster this collective of future board members and provide those advisors the opportunity to learn the craft of being a board member, learn about governance and fiduciary responsibility, and all the things that go into it so that when companies are looking for independent board members, we have this great bench of fantastic board members that are ready to go and will support the diversity that future boards need. If you are an entrepreneur interested in learning more about the collective or somebody who’s been in this industry for a while and feels like they have something to give back to entrepreneurs, please reach out to any of us at TIG Brands.

Raising money is tough. We’re going to spend a lot of time talking about that. One of the biggest challenges now is that you all need to do a little bit of self-reflection and come to the acceptance if you are or are not a brand that is optimized for institutional capital. If you’re not, that doesn’t mean you’re not an investible brand. It means that you may not be the brand that’s going to quickly accelerate to $100 million and have a huge exit, which is what most institutional capital needs. We, the TIG Venture Community, also want to fund and see ways to fund what we call singles and doubles and not just grand slams, or, to put it in our more traditional vernacular, tardigrades not unicorns.

We’re building a rolling fund that supports the brands in our community using innovative structures in terms that does not require the founder just to be focused purely on trying to drive some revenue growth or door growth in order to win the next investment and work towards the exit but rather rewards the entrepreneurs who are building not only great brands but good businesses. If you are an entrepreneur who wants to learn more about that, please reach out, or if you are someone in this industry, an angel investor, part of an angel group, family office, etc., interested in learning more and also supporting the brands that are focused on this, please reach out as well.

I’m going to kick it over to Kat and let her do the introduction because I can never do it justice. I want Kat here to talk with all of us about how you can optimize your pitch and the elements of good pitching and the things that you should not do. Kat, thanks for taking the time. Tell our readers a little bit about you, your background, and what you do.

I appreciate you having me. I can talk about pitching and fundraising and startups all day long, so it’s very exciting for me. I like to say I’m a two-time accidental founder. The first company, I started in college after having my stuff stolen. I transitioned from wanting to go into medicine to entrepreneurship and had no mentors, friends, or family around, so I crafted and honed my pitch until 22 to 23 to help scale the company.

I did that for six years, everything from retail, Amazon, and Good Morning America, and sold and exited and realized that pitching was my superpower. After selling, I officially founded Power To Pitch to help founders with their pitch deck and fundraising strategy to help them get funded faster. We directly introduced them to investors in their industry.

First of all, what did you do wrong on the 23rd?

I’m very competitive. I played sports all my life. I played tennis in college, so I am someone who takes the preparation of things very seriously. I didn’t show up and hoped for the best. I put hours of work into every single pitch, every single meeting, and opportunity. On that one, I was told it was very close. I could have been on the judging panel. I’m still not super clear, but it was being able to be a part of those. It was never for the money. It was more so the connections, the pitch practice, and the opportunities it gave me in that sense. The money was super helpful and projected me to a whole other level.

All kidding aside, that’s a remarkable thing. Kat’s an enigma to hit 22 of 23 in pitch events. As you pitch to investors, you’re going to get a lot of noes even if your pitch is fantastic because sometimes, it’s just a matter of it doesn’t fit that investor’s thesis, they have something else in the portfolio, they’re not in love with the category or stage, or whatever. It’s important to not lose faith in that. We had an episode last time with Alli Reed, the Founder of Stratia, who had gone through 54 consecutive noes before her yes.

I wrote an article about Kelly Perkins at Spinster Sisters who have had 88 investor meetings. It’s hard in those environments, even in the best of times. At this moment, it’s not the easiest of times to raise early capital. Kat, what are some of the dos? What are some of the key things that entrepreneurs need to be able to articulate, accomplish, and lay out in a pitch?

We always strive for founders going and leading with their story and their why, especially in the early stages. The investor in your audience is buying into you before what you do because there’s so much unknown. You’re the one to take the company to the finish line and get through any pivot, so that’s important. We say that storyline is proprietary to you. Anyone can learn with data and statistics, but why should someone care? Why would they want to invest in you? What are your qualities and experiences that make you an exceptional and winning founder, regardless of any prior business experience per se?

Number one is always leading with the story. Two is doing your research and not being lazy because, for someone who had 70 or 88 investor meetings, they were all probably very strategic and much tailored to the industry who they want to be going into a relationship with as a strategic partner. Versus, we see some founders who will put out cold emails to 500 plus on an email list that they got. That has no level of impact. It’s not helping build a relationship. You want to go for quality over quantity. Even if it does take 100 investor meetings, they should be super curated.

Number three is not relying on your deck as a crutch. That ties into understanding your story and being able to be clear, confident, and concise in your communication with the company. You can raise money without a deck. A deck is important, and it can make or break you, but communication for us in our programming, we go through founders with their pitch first before anything else.

To a couple of points to come back on, first of all, on the deck itself, my personal belief is I look at a deck as almost confirmational marketing. Oftentimes, what I see a deck being used for are two things. The first is the access, the gateway. You got to send a deck to get the meeting on the books half the time. The second is that, in a typical investor, especially if it’s a fund or a family office, the person you spoke with is going to need to bring the opportunity to their investment committee.

The deck sometimes helps reinforce the case that they’re going to make on your behalf. I shudder when I see an entrepreneur who gets on with an investor and goes page by page through their deck. I am an investor. I have been on the other end of these conversations. If somebody hits the share screen and pulls up their deck and starts going slide by slide, as much as I would like to say I’m a better person than this, I’m multitasking. I’m often looking at my emails or doing whatever.

That’s the last thing you want. You’re spot on. Make the narrative compelling and make it a conversation. The other thing you pointed out is so critical. That is to curate the lists because if you don’t and you do it randomly, you’re unlikely to land as many meetings as you could if you were curated and learned about what’s in their portfolio and tried to align.

Every day, I sit alongside founders who get their hopes up because they had a great investor meeting, but then they hear no to it. In fact, I know that there’s someone in our audience who had that happen. It’s a body blow. It stinks. It sucks to get that feedback. You start doubting yourself and all of those things. By curating, at least you are positioning yourself maybe to absorb fewer body blows and emotionally. That’s part of the journey.

If I can add to that, we tell founders, “A no is a win,” because so many investors also will say maybe then drag them along. There are so many future meetings of, “Get this when you have this.” “We got into those stores. Now what?” “We want to see a little bit more of this.” They waste so much time with these investors who keep dragging them along, so a no is awesome.

You ask for, “What did you want to see?” A big thing is founders don’t ask investors enough questions. What’s your feedback? If I came to you again, what would you want to see? What is a good thing to prep for your due diligence process? What’s something that I could improve upon if I’m not a fit for you? Every single meeting is a chance to learn from it and grow from it versus taking it as a blow. We try to flip that mindset of like, “No is awesome.” You get to learn from it, then you don’t have to waste your time usually with someone because it’s on to the next one.

I couldn’t agree more. Anything in this journey is learning. It’s an opportunity to capture a nugget of wisdom and use it and so forth. You’re right. We have this conversation a lot with entrepreneurs. The worst thing is ambiguity because it’s a time waste. It’s a conversation I have with a lot of our investor friends. It’s the difference between confusing being nice with being kind. Being nice is telling an entrepreneur, “Let us think about it. Let us talk,” those types of things. Try not to say no to them leaves that pathologically optimistic entrepreneur thinking, “I got this one. This one’s going to happen,” and then they’re chasing it down.

Being kind is saying, “This is a no for us now, and here’s why.” Also, make sure that you’re asking questions throughout the process of the conversation. What are you looking for in an entrepreneur? One of the questions I always like to hear is about investments that you’ve made. What have you seen in those investments that made you invest? What do your founders say about working with you? It’s all of those things. Be inquisitive, be curious, and learn. We all like good car crashes. What are a few of the absolute don’ts or things that make you want to reach out across the Zoom universe, grab the founder by the shoulders, and shake them and say, “Don’t ever do that again?”

I’ve got a long list for this one. I am watching pitches, listening, and getting pitched hundreds of times a week. I need to hire someone to help manage my LinkedIn DMs because everyone wants to put out their pitch, and it’s overwhelming. One of the biggest red flags is founders who say, “Can I send you my deck?” The deck is more than 30 pages. I’ve seen upwards of 55 pages. Who in their right mind has the time to read through all of that?

It’s so wordy and so overwhelming. It makes you think that, “This founder does not know how to dial it back and be concise. What was I supposed to get out of that if I could repeat something to someone else as a matter of importance or an ask?” Oversharing is one of the biggest things. Two, which is right up there with number one, are founders who are combative. If an investor tells you, “Your baby’s ugly.” who cares? Move on.

Learn from it instead of being defensive about it, rude, and dismissive. If they give advice and you don’t agree, that’s fine. Appreciate that they took the time. Take it back and say you’re going to think about it and things like that. We see so many founders who get defensive and take comments on the business personally.

If I may jump in there, I also see founders that go to the other extreme and be completely malleable or take everything the investor says and says, “You’re right. I need to change this and do this.” There is a balance between being fierce and being malleable. The truth is, any feedback that you get from anybody there, and I said it a little bit ago, there is a nugget of wisdom in there. Search for that nugget of wisdom, use it, discard the rest, and move on.

You ask ten investors for feedback on your deck and you get ten different opinions. If you try to adjust each one of those opinions, you’re ping-ponging back and forth. Call BS on this if you want to, but what you try to do is see if amongst those ten there’s a theme. There’s some type of pattern. That’s the thing you need to adjust. The things that are idiosyncratic to that specific investor is likely an opinion, but the things that are consistent that you’re hearing are the things that you need to think through.

I agree with that. I’m not calling BS on it because I also think that’s accurate. Learning to hone in and listen to your intuition and gut as you’re driving the company is one of the biggest things. If you can’t trust yourself and don’t have confidence in your abilities, how can an investor have confidence in you? You have to own up to certain things. When you’re taking in all that advice, it’s like, “Deep down, what does that mean? Is this good for us long term?” versus is this going to appease them in the short term? I see in founders too where an investor wants to change anything or everything, and they’ll say they’ll be the lead investor if they change their entire business model.

They change 100 different things, and it’s a completely different business, and the founder wants the money and tries to do that. Was it the best decision at the end of the day? The investor has majority control. There are a lot of bad investors. There are a lot of bad and good investors and a lot of bad founders and good founders. Part of that is intuition externally and internally as well. That served me well over the years because I had so many people who would tell me how to run the business, “You should go after this. You shouldn’t do this,” or, “You shouldn’t sell your company. You should work on the pitching. That’s your thing.” It was like, “Why would I do all that?” You start to question yourself.

You get that doubt.

You got to learn how to dial that back in as hard as it is, but some of the best founders think have strong intuition.

It’s so hard to trust your intuition because everybody wants to tell you what to do. Alongside us on this journey, every entrepreneur that I’ve ever met, and I know for myself these two things exist, know that those two constant companions are fear and doubt. They can get loud in your ear. If you have an investor meeting and it doesn’t go the way you hope, you walk out of that investor meeting or shut down from Zoom. The cacophony of that fear and doubt is building and almost crippling.

It’s so hard to trust your gut, walk away, and say, “Is it the fear and doubt that’s talking to me, or is that something they need to reshape? What do I hear intuitively?” There’s a conspiracy in this industry to socialize that out of us. I’ve been advising brands and entrepreneurs of late. I welcome you challenging this if you disagree.

Many of our brands are struggling with the fact that when they’re hearing that they’re too early or there’s a lack of belief from the investor that there’s a clear path to them getting to an exit and a liquidity event and so forth. What I’m trying to encourage entrepreneurs to think through and also be able to articulate in their pitch is how they are going to make an investor money, and the business that they’re bringing to this investor, about why they represent the best place for the investor to put the money.

An investor’s going to invest. They tip that off by the fact that they call themselves an investor. They’re going to invest in something. When you’re pitching them, isn’t it your responsibility to try to lay out the compelling reason from your why through your economics as to why you represent the best place for them to put their money?

There’s this one fund that we work with. They said, “Investors don’t have a problem with deal flow. They have a problem with good deal flow.” They said, “We saw 1,000 pitch submissions. We interviewed and had serious meetings with 500 and made 8 total investments.” You have to think there are so many different funds, and they’re all getting bombarded, and all these founders are saying the same things over and over again.

I wish I have a dollar for every founder who told me there’s no one like us, we’re special and very innovative. Those are the worst phrases to say. You think it’s a buzzword or it’s exciting, but it doesn’t give any facts, detail, data, or reality behind what you’re doing. We tell founders, “Explain that.” Make them feel that without you saying it. They want to bring in and fill this. They want hockey stick growth. They want this high level. They paint the most perfect picture when in reality, the investors can read through that BS as well.

They totally do. We call it a BS discount. They start putting this on and start thinking. Also, don’t think that any investor who’s been in this for a while understands that things never happen in a linear progression. It’s okay to talk about some of your stumbles and challenges. In some ways, asking your opinion here, it’s a benefit to admit to some of the struggles and also point to what you’ve done to rectify that. If I’m looking through an investor lens, it’s great when things are going well, but I want to know the entrepreneur you’re going to be when the stuff hits the fan and if you’re going to be able to make the tough decisions and make the important calls in those moments to move the business forward in the right direction.

My partner in Power to Pitch is an active angel investor as well. She says, “If a founder’s trying to spit an answer and make every single answer to a question sound super rosy and that everything’s perfect, I know they’re lying. I want them to be transparent. I want them to show. I ask about a time that they failed. I ask about big challenges and things like that because it’s a test of the founder and their character.” As you’re saying, you got to figure out if they can get through things when things hits the fan.

You and your business partner, Katie, not only talk to a lot of entrepreneurs, but you talk to a lot of investors and so forth. What are you hearing out there now from the investor pulse? There are a lot of talks as people have concerns about the macroeconomic environment and the potential recession and so forth. What are you hearing from your investors that you’re in contact with?

There are some concerns here and there, but I can’t even count on two hands the amount of new funds that have opened and the amount of new angel syndicates that have popped up. It’s an excuse for founders to say, “We’re having a hard time with this,” but there’s so much research that can be done out there. This information is so easily accessible from Twitter, LinkedIn and AngelList alone on top of all the other platforms and people that you can bring on your board.

There’s a lot more opportunity than people are making it out to be. I know the funds are actively deploying as they’re raising. I can’t speak for every fund. There are also more grant opportunities now more than ever. We also help founders go for grants at the same time they’re fundraising because they’re incredible opportunities. You don’t have to give up equity. One just won an $85,000 grant. We helped another one with a $30,000 grant. Those are bigger than some angel checks.

They’re non-dilutive.

A lot of it out there is people who want to talk about it and have something to say, but it’s BS that there’s not.

It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy too. If you’re an entrepreneur and start buying into the belief that there’s less capital out there and investors are less interested in investing, that’s what’s going to happen for you. I believe that. This is where I get, quite frankly, mad. Those of you reading are amazing, innovative, and creative change agents. You inspire me every day. I’m so in awe of the courage that it takes to be an entrepreneur in this space.

The one place where I feel like you fail yourself is that you check a lot of that innovation, creativity, and moxie at the door when it comes to the way you approach the whole aspect of funding your business. There is a lot of money to be had out there not just from VCs. It’s from grants and non-dilutive types. It’s from debt providers. There are a lot of ways.

Be innovative, be creative and be a researcher. If you’re not a researcher, spend a little money on a VA or an intern who’s a student at the university or whatever and let them do the research. Identify any hacks or suggestions in terms of ways entrepreneurs can identify potential investors, grants, and things like that.

To echo what I said before, AngelList, LinkedIn, and Twitter are some of the biggest deal flow that we’re seeing for founders.

Tell me how you would use Twitter and LinkedIn expressly. On LinkedIn, would you suggest that they subscribe to Sales Navigator or Premium? Give us a rundown.

You can. I know a lot that doesn’t. You can use the free version and get up to over 100 searches a month free, so you can start there. Let’s say you find a hit list of specific funds within your stage industry or whatever. On LinkedIn, it’s public that X people work for this fund, so have a genuine, short connection note and take it from there. All these people are literally what they look for. It is clear as day.

Most founders are lazy in doing research. They want to get mass out there and see if they can get a fish to bite versus being in the right pond for the right fish. It’s in their bios. It honestly is that accessible. It’s crazy to me when founders are like, “I can’t find them. I don’t know where to look.” You can google angel investor, venture cap, or family office. All of that is within the search bar.

When you find people like that, the other thing that I always suggest is to see if there are any mutual contacts. I get this all the time. I get an email and somebody says, “Would you be willing to make some introductions to investors for me?” That makes it hard for me. What investor? Who’s the right investor? What do I tell them about you and so forth? When I get an email from somebody that says, “I looked on LinkedIn, and you’re connected to Kat Weaver. I want to have a chat with her. Would you mind making an introduction? Here’s a little blurb you can use in your email.”

I’m going to make that introduction. It’s simple for me. You’ve done all the work for me, and I’m happy to do that. Those are the little things that you can do to better position yourself for getting connected. You’re right. It’s right there. We live in the information age. The stuff is at our fingertips. You can find it out. There are other couples of resources. There’s the Angel Association, which has a list of all the published syndicates and angel groups. There is Gust, another place where you can look for information.

We make direct introductions, depending on what you’re looking for because we’ve met each founder before doing it for the heck of it. You can see whether a certain person within a fund is more active on Twitter, LinkedIn, or whatever. You could do the research and see. Some will say, “DM is open. Pitch me.” I also see founders where their message is the length of my arm in terms of a DM, and no one’s going to read that.

There is also a fine line of, as you’re saying, making it easy and how you’re putting yourself out there because it’s easy for an investor to be like, “This is so obnoxious. They didn’t research me. This is so overwhelming. This is going to take me twenty minutes to read. Why would I do this?” There’s no FOMO there.

One of the things that we talk about, too, where I feel entrepreneurs can help themselves more is in the cadence of email communication and the type of communication. You mentioned it. To me, the number one way to shoot yourself in the foot is to try to make every single salient point you possibly can in an email and send it off. If an email like that shows up in my inbox, I likely am going to just get rid of it or, best case, I might think to myself, “I’ll come back to it.” Either way, I never do. That’s one mistake.

The first email should be short. If you’ve got ten great salient points, then I would make those ten short emails. The other thing we failed to do is that we send an email to an investor which we’ve worked so hard to craft, and it’s a great long email. We sit on our hands and go, “I should follow up, but I don’t want to seem pushy,” and you keep waiting and waiting then you follow up two weeks later or a week later. By then, that’s like starting the whole process over again.

My recommendation, and I would like your feedback, is a quick short email followed by subsequent, quick, non-pushy, not like, “Why aren’t you responding? Here’s an article that was about us. Just putting this on top of your inbox so forth,” at a cadence of every 72 hours, somewhere in that range, until that person responds to you, saying, “Thanks. Sorry, it’s taken me so long. Happy to talk.”

You’ve created enough cognitive dissonance that they feel like, “I can’t continue to blow off Kat. She’s been consistent and persistent but not pushy or crappy about it,” or they say, “I’m taking out a restraining order if you ever email me again,” which comes back to that no. Most entrepreneurs will send one long email, wait two weeks, and send another, then go, “That person has no interest in talking to me.” What are you seeing or what do you recommend as best practices around that communication?

I like to think of sending emails and information in bullets instead of long sentences. You should be able to answer why you, why now, what you need from me, and why am I the person for you. It’s those four things. I should be able to open that email and skim through that and understand it in literal seconds. It shouldn’t take me five minutes to read through who the heck you are, what the name of your company is, and trying to find links like you’ve created too much work.

It’s bullets, not paragraphs because you let their brain fill in the info like, “Give me high level.” The why you and why now are super important. I’ll get LinkedIn DMs which I know are spammy. I don’t know why. It’s mostly guys who do this for some reason of, “Madame, you’re the perfect investor,” followed by a huge, long email. “I have a robotics company, and here is my 40-page pitch deck. Here’s my number. You need to answer me at your earliest convenience. We’re about to close our round.”

“What part of that makes me want to respond with anything other than an FU?”

It’s gone to the point where it’s comical, so it’s pretty easy to look good against what’s out there. There’s a lot of bad noise. It’s keeping it simple. Less is more in terms of your follow-up.

What about showing up differently? What about instead of the typical email, using something like Loom to embed a 30-second video and say, “Rather than another boring email, I wanted to share a little bit about me and what I’m doing,” and things like that?

I was about to say that. That’s a huge value add. You say their name, which is personalized, then you can see if they’ve watched the video. If they’re not responding, you get data behind them opening and looking at it so you understand it. If it’s, “I saw you haven’t watched my video yet. I’ve added my deck for you. Here’s a 20-second product demo,” and follow up with a video. They’re like, “It’s not just some spam. I can see the change. I can see that they’re interested in why I make sense for them.” Why the heck would you not want to answer someone who’s so diligent and respectful of who you are and what your time is?

One of the things in our business in natural products, like food, bev, personal care, and things like that is we’ve got products that investors will enjoy. Leveraging samples is hugely important. I get this from time to time. There are times when I’ll get a package that shows up randomly at the office, and I have no idea who it’s from or anything along those lines. Most of the time, I’ll get a package with an interesting unboxing experience and a personal note.

One of the interesting ways to do this is to reach out and say, “We’d love to get a chance to talk to you about what we’re doing. I’ve sent samples to your office.” Once those samples get there, you send another email saying, “Hopefully, you’ve received the samples. I’ll check back with you in a couple of days.” A couple of days later, “I hope you enjoyed the samples. I would love to set a meeting.”

You’ve gone to all that work which is hard for that person to say no. The one thing I want to come back around to is this is why it’s so important to curate because if you go to this trouble and expense but haven’t gone the trouble and taking the time to curate the list, you’ll get these meetings, but you’re going to get a meeting with somebody who’s already predestined or predetermined to say no. You’ve now wasted not only the physical energy and the dollars but also the emotional energy.

What are other innovative approaches? I want to unlock anything that we can offer entrepreneurs here. Of the six people who read this, some of them are investors as well. From an investor perspective, we’re also letting them know how hard this is and how important it is for them to understand empathetically what the entrepreneurs are going through. What other approaches and innovative ways have you seen entrepreneurs?

I’ve got some. The number one thing, which doesn’t sound innovative but you’d be surprised by how many founders lead with this, is asking for hour-long meetings. No one has that time. We know our investor partners are seeing 50 pitches a week minimum. They don’t have that time. Ask for 10 to 15 of their time to start to build a relationship versus something long where you want to overshare and get it all out there. You can still get to know them, pitch them, build a relationship, and figure out the next steps what they need from you in ten minutes or less. You could do it in five or less.

I love this idea. Would you recommend something like, “Kat, I love to learn more about you and share a little bit about you. How about a 10 or 15-minute get-to-know-you chat to see if it makes sense for us to set up a longer conversation?”

Our investors tell us this too. The reason I say they tell us this is it’s not me just preaching to the choir and making this stuff up. It’s truly from our investor partners, which is why we prep our founders so well. They’re like, “I don’t need a founder to pull up a duck in that first meeting. I want to talk with them. I want to see how they act. I want to get to know them.”

The first meeting is relationship building 100%. This isn’t a quote from me. I forgot where I saw this one. I’m not taking credit for it. They wrote that, “The best pitches aren’t rapid-fire interviews. They’re collaborative discussions.” Founders think they need to show up guns blazing. “This is me. This is my company. I know we have only a few minutes of time,” then it’s like, “You are overwhelming. Can we just have a conversation?” You’d be surprised. As scary as some investors seem, they’re people too. A lot of founders forget that they’re people.

Not only they are people but honestly, in my experience, which I hate doing this publicly because it’s going to go right to all their heads, but almost every single investor I know and spend time with and work with deeply cares about the entrepreneur or wants to do right by them and are good people. They’re in a situation where they also have to represent what’s in their best interest financially, or, in the case of a fund, what’s in their LPs’ best interest, and it’s not always a fit.

One of the things that I suggest is starting a conversation with an investor, especially if it’s your first one on how would you best like to use this time instead of assuming what they want to do as a pitch. Sometimes that investor may want to ask questions or, “Tell me a little bit about yourself.” It depends. It is a form of dating.

We say that going to invest is like a marriage. You’re giving up equity. You are in a full partnership, so you are dating 100%.

Using that analogy, do you show up on your first date and say, “I work out five days a week and I only eat healthy food. I can run a four-minute mile.” You don’t do that. You say, “Tell me about yourself. Nice to meet you.” It’s not that different. Unless it’s a pitch competition or a structured pitch, it’s ultimately a conversation. We talked a little bit about grants and other things. Let’s take a minute and explore your program a bit. Let’s say I’m an entrepreneur and I’m realizing that funding is the fuel that allows me to continue my entrepreneurial journey.

If you’re spending all day long building this fantastic race car and not concentrating at all about the quality and the source of the fuel you’re going to put in it to get you down the track, you’re not going to go very far. It’s important to invest in that part of your business as well. For an entrepreneur who’s interested in getting support from you and your team, what’s that look like and what elements? Walk us through it.

We vet every single founder we work with. It’s a short interview process. We essentially screen for four main things. It’s coachability, passion, grit, and transparency/integrity because the founders are a reflection on us at the end of the day when we make our introductions to investors. We are pitch first in everything we do.

We have education around pitch investor psychology, then in deck creation, and potential Q&A. We have a due diligence checklist. We guarantee that once we approve those documents, we make direct and warm introductions to investors. We have a weekly group call and a private community. We’re very strategic and curated and work closely with all the founders that we bring in.

In our course, we have pre-seed to seed-stage founders. Privately, we work with series A and above-stage founders. We’ve helped them raise millions in grants and venture capital to date and counting. There is a method to it. Any founder who is reading, you can find us at PowerToPitch.com, and our application link to book a call with us is listed there.

When is the right time for an entrepreneur to think about the program and the process? Is this the first time they’re raising capital or after they’ve maybe raised from friends and family? When is it important to start investing in honing your pitch and preparing yourself to be as effective as possible?

Whether or not it’s with Power To Pitch or whatever, your pitch should be number one at any stage of the business. Whether you’re pre-revenue or you have an idea, you still need to be able to explain it to someone. It’s something that is so underutilized and looked past at any stage. In pre-revenue, you have this idea up to founders who have already raised $10 million. A pitch is crucial.

For us, we look for validated MVPs. You could be pre-revenue, but do you have any pre-sales, an email list, or any strategic partners or LOIs? We want to make sure that there is a little skin in the game. Traction doesn’t always have to mean money per se, but we don’t want it to be a back-of-the-napkin idea because we get super strategic and hit the ground running when we’re ready for investors. We want to make sure that they’re aligned with our partners within our program.

Money and giving up equity aren’t for every type of business and every founder. If we don’t feel from the other founder that we’re talking to, we will tell them. We’ll say, “Go for grants first. Focus on that. Look at some revenue-based financing based on your current situation.” We want to be transparent about that process because we’re founder-first in everything that we do. It sounds exciting to say, “I want to raise a few million dollars and have all these investors.” It sounds like the cool trendy thing to do, but that’s not always a fit for every type of business.

One of the things entrepreneurs need to understand, too, is if you haven’t expressly decided that the first thing you want to do is build as quickly as you can and then get purchased by somebody or acquired by somebody, and you’re thinking about, “Maybe I want to run this forever. Maybe I want to eventually allow my employees to buy it. Maybe I want to stay a part of it and have a partner.”

Even as simple as deciding you’re going to raise the most common convertible note, you are predestined to that first option. In order for an investor to make money on their convertible note, the first thing that has to happen is for the note to convert. The way that note converts is through qualified financing, which necessitates some form of institutional capital or VC money above whatever you set, like $1 million or $2 million to come in and put a value on the business.

That’s the first step. Once that happens, that institutional investor who wants to make their money back and the way they see it as the only path to make their money back is through an acquisition. In the very early days, you’re not even thinking about that. All you’re thinking about is raising the money that you need to make this dream happen. You’re setting yourself on that being your course.

Step back and think about, “What is the end for me? What do I want? Do I want to make that decision now, or do I want to be able to have the option of looking at other things down the road?” That also helps determine the sources that you can potentially raise from, the structures that you can potentially raise from, etc. I encourage people to understand that it’s critical that you enter this and become a student of this, read about it, and study it. It’s a very vital part of being an entrepreneur. We only have a few minutes left, so I want to hit a couple of rapid-fire questions for you. What did you do right in those 22 pitches that others can listen from?

I honed my story and had a clear outline of why I was qualified to bring the business forward. The third was my ask was always clear because it was always money on the line. I always gave the judges and the investors the most confidence, and I would do right by the money. They always told me that. This isn’t me thinking that those things were good.

I always had them come up to me after and say, “You won for these reasons,” or the judging score. If I had a rubric, I made sure that I checked off every freaking box and went through it. My parents used to say, “I never want to hear that pitch again.” They would come to a lot of the pitches and hear it. It was so consistent and well-rehearsed that they practically could recite it.

You said something that’s important, which is well-rehearsed. Spending time rehearsing and getting confident with the pitch is paramount to being able to deliver it well, whether it’s at a pitch competition or in conversation.

I was about to add that. In terms of the rehearsal, you don’t become an expert speaker overnight. It is so much practice. This also helps in doing that if you’re a nervous speaker. If you’ve practiced and run through it so many times, you are so much less likely to chicken out and stumble because your brain already knows what to say next. You already have this backup. I used to have a physical tally sheet, and I would mark it off. I would do 50 to 100 times minimum. That was a bare minimum before I walked into any room or talked to anyone because I wasn’t going to waiver between this information.

I used to serve as a mentor at a pitch competition that was put on by Rabobank called FoodBytes! when FoodBytes was more CPG-centric. We spent three days with the founders getting them ready to pitch. On the fourth day, they would pitch in front of a very large room of investors. It could be 300 or 400 investors.

Here’s one of my favorite stories. On the first day, we asked the founders to give their pitch, and this gentleman got up to pitch. I’ve never seen anybody so nervous in a pitch before. It was awful. Sadly, he was perspiring profusely. His shirt was soaking wet by the end of the pitch and so forth. We spent time with him. His pitch was good, and we honed it, but we said, “Go and stand in front of a mirror for the next three days and pitch and pitch.”

It came the day of the pitch, and he got up on stage. He looked like he was the calmest, had his crap together, and delivered this awesome pitch. The mentors were high-fiving and hugging each other because it was such an incredible transformation. In that transformation, the pitch he was giving didn’t change that much. It was him. It was his confidence and the ability to deliver it and talk about it and feel good about it that did.

As I said at the beginning, you’re going to bring with you fear and doubt. They’re coming alongside for the ride. There’s no doubt about it, but the more rehearsed you are, the more confident and more conversational you are. Talk about your business with anybody and everybody. Stop to get a coffee at the coffee shop and pitch them. Always be talking about it in a way that gets you so comfortable, confident, and conversational about it that you can deliver it. I’m going to give you the last word. What do you want to leave everybody with?

I want to leave everyone that a no is never really a no. Everything is negotiable. If an investor tells you no, then you got to figure out how you are going to change their mind and how you are going to do that. No is never no, and everything is negotiable. That’s heard me for years in my business and still to this day. It’s a small little token, but when a mentor told me that, it stuck with me for my whole life. I wish more founders knew that.

I’m going to end with this. That is from Adam Hamilton and Josh Velazquez who were the people that had the opportunity to work with you, Kat, and were the ones that brought us together and made the introduction. They wanted to make sure to give you a shout-out and an endorsement because they found it so invaluable, and they highly recommend it.

I know they mean that sincerely and don’t say it lightly. It changed their level of confidence and comfort in their pitching. There’s nothing better than hearing that straight from a founder. Thanks for chiming in, Adam, and thanks for making this introduction. Kat, thanks so much for joining us. I appreciate it, and we’ll see everybody in the next episode.

Thank you, guys. It’s been awesome to be here. I appreciate it.

 Important Links

• Women on Boards

• JEDI Collaborative

• New Hope

• Power To Pitch

• Stratia

• Spinster Sisters

• AngelList

• Gust

• FoodBytes!

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