For the entrepreneur, life is often “just-in-time”. With this in mind, the typical Founder is likely to delay putting together a pitch deck until if or when they decide to go for external funding. I would like to present a contrarian view as to why creating a business pitch is actually one of the things they should be doing, even if they aren’t looking for funding today.
What if your Startup doesn’t fit into a maturity level box?
One thing I recommend founders to do is to think of the company as being a portfolio of projects, and the founder as being the strategic owner of this portfolio. Each specific product or service that the company is offering is a project in the portfolio that sits under the umbrella of the company. Then they can look at the maturity level of each project and the company itself. For example, a company that is offering a service to a customer base and at the same time is thinking of how they can translate that service into a SaaS product offering, may already have a good problem/market fit for the company itself, be in efficiency in terms of delivering the service and be just starting validation for the SaaS service.
What market sector is your company in? How you answer the question speaks volumes
I’ve been doing customer discovery interviews of Founders that start off with some demographic questions to place some context around the discovery questions that are the meat of the interview. It’s been interesting to hear the answer the Founder gives. Because it’s usually phrased in one of two ways: self-reflective in language that talks about the function of the company; or in customer-centric language that describes the market that the customer sits in.
Business to Everyone – Offering an online solution as a business-ready consumable
The traditional B2B Customer is changing. The distinction between business user and consumer itself is blending. With an increasing mobile workforce who use smart phones and tablets as well as the practice of Bring-Your-Own-Device, products and services now exist where the user decides whether it’s used for business or personal use, and floats between the two. This customer wants the splash and accessibility that has traditionally been the realm of B2C, while retaining the professionalism and reliability of a B2B offering.
Bootstrapping is when Customers fund growth of the company, not Founders
When most people speak about a Startup’s funding approach as “bootstrapping”, they often are referring to the Founders putting some time and capital into the company. This is actually an incorrect use of the term in Startup “speak”, as that Founder input is still an investment. And though it’s usual that Founders put some cash into their companies or minimally defer taking anything out, it’s still actually investment. Just not an external investment. It is a type of Seed Funding.
Why a Founder Needs to Cast a Team
Building a startup team based on skills is a lot like the casting activity in the film industry. Those responsible for casting a movie will look at the character in the plot, and try to find actors that they know have the ability to play the role. Though there is also a secondary look at how these actors look together on film, their onscreen chemistry. So the casting activity is actually a casting of the ensemble, not just the individual actors.
