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Talking to a VC About Your Competitors

Both Sides of the Table

The “competition slide&# of your investment deck is such a great opportunity to talk about how you’re positioned (premium product vs. economical product? Here’s some thoughts on the competition slide and also how to talk about it: Competition. The Harvey Ball slide should in a way just be a depiction of this strategy.

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How to Configure Your Startup Team

Both Sides of the Table

Early-stage companies shouldn’t: outsource core product development, have consulting firms build it for them to speed up time-to-market, shouldn’t hire too many business people until product is complete and early product/market fit tested. Ok, well not that pretty since I do my own slides and often at 1am.

Startup 389
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What Should You Send a VC Before Your Meeting?

Both Sides of the Table

You want to develop a “narrative” that holds the readers attention and helps shape the company into context. If you have another 15–20 super detailed slides they should either be in an appendix after you get through the main presentation or in a separate deck that you may or may not get out. A great meeting is a debate, not a pitch.

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How to Nail a Group Presentation

Both Sides of the Table

No one gives a s**t about your features other than your product manager and your developers. In any speech I do that is information rich I often have a summary slide at the end with the key points I want them to remember. Tell us about the breakthrough they’ll have when they’re using your product. Oh wait, there is.

Slides 399
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Identifying Pain in the First Step in a Sales Process – Here’s How

Both Sides of the Table

In my first enterprise software company we developed a methodology for sales that we called PUCCKA. Too many sales reps walk into customer meetings with their pre-canned sales decks and proudly squawk through 30 of their favorite slides without engaging the customer in a discussion. Click here. This post is about the “P” or pain.

Sales 367
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Here Are the Details About Upfront Ventures’ Newest EIR – @Chamillionaire

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Chamillionaire has a way more refined sense of what customer behavior is like than most ivy league graduates with nice Powerpoint slides that I meet. So we discussed his moving to LA for a while and working in our offices and developing his ideas and we decided to formalize it. Welcome to the family. Startup Lessons'

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What Makes an Entrepreneur? Four Letters: JFDI

Both Sides of the Table

But “he didn’t have the budget to hire a developer until he had raised money!&#. He went out and found a developer and built a product. I said (out loud), “I sure wish that some of the time that went into these PowerPoint slides would have gone into meetings with the COO, CFO or CMO of [Elephant Customer].&#