Convince Investors to Fund You Read online

  Convince Investors to Fund You

  The Insider’s Guide to

  Avoid Deadly Mistakes and Gain

  Real Success with Your Startup Business

  from GetTheBigYES.com

  Tom Marcoux

  Spoken Word Strategist

  Executive Coach – Pitch Coach

  International Speaker-Author of 50+ books

  CEO

  A QuickBreakthrough Publishing Edition

  Copyright © 2019 Tom Marcoux Media, LLC

  Praise for Tom Marcoux’s Methods that Help Entrepreneurs

  Gain Funding

  • “I’m truly grateful to Tom Marcoux for essential tips that helped me win the Grand Prize of the Pitch Competition—the Igniter Summit in Bangkok, Thailand.” – Neeraj Aggarwala, CEO/Founder of Sportido

  • “You’ll learn to build and sustain a powerful motivation to keep focused and achieve your dreams.” – David Barron, co-author of Power Persuasion

  Praise for Tom Marcoux’s Other Work:

  • “Concerned about networking situations? Get Relax Your Way Networking. Success is built on high trust relationships. Master Coach Tom Marcoux reveals secrets to increase your influence.”

  – Greg S. Reid, Author, Think and Grow Rich Series

  • “In Tom Marcoux’s Now You See Me, the powerful and easy-to-use ideas can make a big difference in your business and your personal relationships.” – Allen Klein, author of You Can’t Ruin My Day

  • “In Darkest Secrets of Persuasion and Seduction Masters: How to Protect Yourself and Turn the Power to Good, learn how to defend yourself against manipulation.”

  – Dr. JoAnn Dahlkoetter, Coach to CEOs and Olympic Gold Medalists

  • “In Connect, Tom’s advice on how to remain true to yourself and establish authentic rapport with clients is both insightful and reality based. He [shows how] to establish oneself as a credible expert.”

  – Arthur P. Ciaramicoli, Ed.D., Ph.D., author The Stress Solution

  • “In Reduce Clutter, Enlarge Your Life, Marcoux will help you get rid of the physical and mental clutter occupying precious space in your life. You’ll reclaim wasted energy, lower your stress, and find time for new opportunities.” – Laura Stack, author of Execution IS the Strategy

  Visit Tom’s blogs: GetTheBigYES.com PitchPowerFest.com

  CONTENTS*

  * These are highlights. Much more is in this book.

  Dedication, Acknowledgments, Free eBook, more

  Convince Investors to Fund You; Countermeasure #1 vs. “How do I convince investors to fund me?”

  Countermeasure #2 vs. “How do I create a Slide Deck that gains meeting with investors?”

  Countermeasure #3 vs. “How do I handle it, if my mind goes blank?”

  Countermeasure #4 vs. “What can I do if things go bad in a pitch meeting with an investor?”

  Develop Extreme Confidence, Speak with No Fear

  Show confidence when under fire from investors’ tough questions

  Stay Strong and Go Forward when facing Rejection

  Overcome Deadly Mistakes; Learn to Be Heard and Be Trusted

  Final Word; Excerpt from Darkest Secrets of Persuasion and Seduction Masters: How to Protect Yourself and Turn the Power to Good

  Special Offer Just for Readers, About the Author Tom Marcoux, Spoken Word Strategist & Executive Coach

  DEDICATION AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  This work is dedicated to YOU. Here are Special Offers:

  • Get your free eBook Develop Your Extreme Confidence and Seize Advantages in Business and Life at http://bit.ly/29bVpox

  • Apply for a Free Breakthrough Strategy Session with Tom Marcoux https://GetTheBigYES.com/nextstep

  This book also dedicated to the terrific Video/Audio Strategist and author Johanna E. Mac Leod. Thanks to Dave Hobley for our conversations. Thanks to Johanna E. Mac Leod for this book’s cover. Thanks to my father, Al Marcoux, for his concern and efforts for me … and to my mother, Sumiyo Marcoux, a kind, generous soul. Thank you to Higher Power … and to our readers, audiences, clients, my graduate students and my team members of Tom Marcoux Media, LLC and GetTheBigYES.com. The best to you.

  Thank you to the contributors (including interviewees):

  LaChelle Adkins

  Marc Allen

  Dr. David Bergner

  Taylor Cone

  Jeanna Gabellini

  Natalie Glebova

  David Joud

  Guy Kawasaki

  Jay Conrad Levinson

  Dr. Frederic Luskin

  Andres Pira

  Bill Reichert

  Danielle Strachman

  Dr. Ginny Whitelaw

  Henry Wong

  Many blessings to you,

  Tom

  Tom Marcoux

  Spoken Word Strategist

  Convince Investors to Fund You

  Imagine this: it’s your big moment. Either you’re in front of a crucial audience and you’re making the pitch of your life. Or you’re sitting across from the investor who could launch your dream. Then your mind goes blank. What can you do?

  This book, now in your hands, includes answers that I have communicated to audiences from New York to New Zealand (including Silicon Valley, California, Thailand and more). In my workshops Convince Investors to Fund You and Your Secret Charisma: Hidden Methods for Influence and Trust, I have revealed the secret-methods so that you overcome the tough moments that make or break your pitch or your life-changing meeting.

  This book is designed to be a quick read.

  We reveal answers to these questions:

  How do I convince investors to fund me?

  How do I create the slide deck that gains meetings with investors?

  How do I handle it, if my mind goes blank?

  How can I use hidden methods to convince the investor?

  What can I do if things go bad in a pitch meeting with an investor?

  How can I experience real confidence and gain the trust of investors? (Secrets of Extreme Confidence)

  How can I speak with No Fear?

  How do I show confidence when under fire from an investor’s tough question?

  What can I do if I lose heart in my project/company?”

  How can I stay strong and keep going forward in the face of Rejection Trouble?

  You’ll find great value in how the book includes guidance from top venture capital leaders who use their power to say yes or no to startup companies. You’ll find guidance from a billionaire, millionaires, top entrepreneurs and more.

  You’ll learn to avoid 3 Deadly Mistakes that can torpedo your efforts to gain investors.

  These Methods Gain Results:

  “I’m truly grateful to Tom Marcoux for essential tips that helped me win the Grand Prize of the Pitch Competition—the Igniter Summit in Bangkok, Thailand.” – Neeraj Aggarwala, CEO/Founder of Sportido

  “Tom Marcoux has coached me to make my speeches compelling and powerful. He has helped me prepare for the media. And, he’s helping me prepare my TED Talk. Do your career a big favor and engage Tom Marcoux, the Spoken Word Strategist.” – Dr. JoAnn Dahlkoetter, Sports Psychologist, author of Your Performing Edge and Coach to CEOs and Olympic Gold Medalists

  Let’s begin.

  Section One

  How do I convince investors to fund me?

  Countermeasure: Use the 5 C's to create trust.

  As he gave a pitch to fifteen investors circling a table, Sam faltered. The next five pitch-makers crashed and burned, too. My heart went out to them. I saw the disappointment on their faces. They knew that they had failed to connect. None of them gained funding.

  It was worse. They didn’t know what
mistakes they made. Seeing such losses inspired me to write two books: Darkest Secrets of Making a Pitch to the Film and Television Industry and Soar with Confidence: Pitch – Lead – Succeed.

  More than that, I created a workshop, Convince Investors to Fund You, that has served participants from Silicon Valley, California to Bangkok, Thailand.

  Convince Investors to Fund You:

  Master the 3 Critical Factors of Pitch,

  Network and Follow-Up

  At conferences, after I have served as a Pitch Judge, people leading startup companies approach to me. I’m glad to be helpful. Some of them come on too strong, and it’s clear no one trained them in how to create rapport before they make “the big ask.” A realization blossomed in my thoughts: Investors know on a subconscious mind level that some startup leaders are pros and others are amateurs.

  I trust that you’ve seen that first impressions sometimes cannot be transformed, so it is crucial to do your best to prepare. You need to make an excellent impression on someone who can change your life for the better.

  The big idea here is that certain individuals may know how to pitch but crash and burn when it comes to networking and follow-up.

  You need to know how to respond if an investor comes up and says, “I’d like to know more about what you’re doing.”

  The truth is that the entrepreneurial idea is not always king or queen. It’s whether you are trustworthy. Basically, an investor says, “Yes, I want to go on this adventure with you.”

  The problem about an adventure is that somewhere along the line you can get hit and bleed.

  The investor is saying, “Can I trust you to lead?”

  Two Major Ideas Related to Convincing Investors

  To convince investors to fund you, hone your skills related to…

  • Be heard and be trusted.

  • Investors are testing you all along the way.

  It’s best that investors test the startup leader because they want to know answers to: “Can you succeed? Are you trustworthy?”

  Recently, an interviewer asked me, “What’s the biggest thing that an introvert could do to just screw up the whole thing?”

  “Fail to rehearse,” I replied.

  In my Convince Investors to Fund You workshop, I truly like helping people rehearse during the workshop. I recall this quote:

  I hear, and I forget.

  I see, and I remember.

  I do, and I understand.

  – Confucius

  What Do Investors Want to Know About You so They Find You to be Trustworthy?

  In an interview, I said, “Investors want to know that you’re trustworthy. And to know that you’re stable.” That got a chuckle from the interviewer.

  Recently, I gave a workshop, Convince Investors to Fund You at a Silicon Valley, CA. Conference featuring keynote addresses by Stanford University notables.

  This caught my eye because I have taught MBA students at Stanford University twice.

  Additionally, I served as a Pitch Judge (for the conference), working with fellow Pitch Judge Henry Wong (a leader with Garage Technology Ventures, co-founded by Guy Kawasaki).

  During my workshop, I shared the following “5 C’s.”

  The 5 C’s to Assure Investors that You Are Trustworthy

  Confident

  Competent

  Connection-building

  Conflict-skilled

  Coachable

  Confident

  To be perceived as confident, you do well to make sure that your words and body language are congruent.

  Notice if your words do not match your hand gestures. If you say, “I’m confident that my new XY product will gain a 67% market share in two months”—but you’re wringing your hands, there’s a real problem. Your wringing hands communicate your nervousness and self-doubt more powerfully than your words might imply confidence.

  The solution is to pay attention and act in positive ways. If you have a habit of wringing your hands, get your hands away from each other.

  If you feel nervous, make sure that you have a 3 x 5 card in your hand and not an 8.5 x 11-inch sheet of paper in your hand. Why? A sheet of paper will betray the trembling of your hand.

  If someone asks a tough question, pay attention and avoid your feet unconsciously betraying you by stepping back. Instead, practice taking two appropriate steps toward the person and say something like “I can see that’s important to you.”

  The above are just a few examples of how you can make your words and body language congruent—so they tell one story. The story is: You are confident. Confidence is contagious.

  Here’s something I often emphasize:

  Confidence is not comfort.

  Confidence is a toolkit, and you work it.

  Competent

  When one wants to signal to investors that he or she is competent—particularly in a pitch, it’s best to use something I call the B.E.C.C. process.

  In a pitch, you communicate with these elements:

  B – big idea

  E – engage with story

  C – credible

  C – compelling

  Here we’ll focus on the Big Idea. My short, memorable way to look at a Big Idea is “Unfair advantage, disruption and big profits.” From my conversations with investors, I see that these three elements seize their attention.

  The highly competent person delivering a pitch provides the Big Idea early in their pitch.

  More than two years later, after I presented my B.E.C.C. process in workshops and speeches in Silicon Valley, California, I had the chance to interview Bill Reichert. I was energized to hear his emphasis on “credible and compelling.”

  Interview with Bill Reichert

  Tom: When somebody makes a pitch, what is crucial for them to do? What must they do positively?

  Bill: In order to be effective at pitching, you’ve got to do three things. And you’ve got to do them in 20 seconds. First, you’ve got to be clear about what it is that your business is doing. The investor has to understand your business, your service or product. You have roughly one sentence to clearly communicate what business you’re in.

  Second, you have to be compelling. You have to get them to say, “Wow! That’s amazing. Tell me more!” There has to be something about what you are doing that is incredibly exciting, that makes you stand out, that will cause your customers to love you. And you have to get this across in one or two sentences.

  Third, you’ve got to be credible. There are a whole bunch of ways to communicate credibility. What is the indication that what you’re telling me is true?… you’re not just blowing smoke. One of the best is some level of third-party validation.

  This brand name person or company is a customer or a partner. Convince the investor that you’re really different than the alternatives; you’re not just more of the same.

  You’ve got to be clear, compelling and credible in the first 20 seconds. Then investors will listen to the rest of your pitch, rather than checking their iPhones.

  Tom: What is the big mistake that someone, who is delivering a pitch, must avoid?

  Bill: The big mistake is doing the opposite of clear, compelling and credible. And we see it all the time. It broadly fits into the category of the curse of knowledge. One VC calls it, “the paradox of brilliance.” This is a nice way of saying it. Entrepreneurs live and breathe their product, market and business all the time. As a result, it’s sometimes hard for them to appreciate what the person on the other end, the investor, does not understand about what the entrepreneur is doing.

  A classic example is the entrepreneur who says, “We’re going to disrupt the entire home mortgage industry.”

  There’s no content in that statement. This entrepreneur knows what they’re doing and is probably excited about it. We know the company is doing something in the home mortgage industry. But we have no idea why we should be excited.

  The entrepreneur goes on: “Our SaaS platform will transform the industry by automating m
anual processes and applying AI-based analytics.” Intuitively, we get that automation and AI should be good things, but we still don’t understand how this is going to transform and disrupt the industry. For whatever reason, entrepreneurs don’t appreciate that we don’t already know why their company is brilliant. This is a common, broad-based problem: Lack of clarity about what the heck you’re doing. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been a judge at a pitch competition, and, after a four-minute pitch, one of the judges says, “I don’t understand what your business is.”

  Another classic example of this problem is when an entrepreneur starts using jargon or acronyms to describe what they’re doing. If you don’t know what the acronym means, then you’re totally lost.

  Here’s an example I love. An entrepreneur came in and said, “And unlike any other power electronics device company, we’re using silicon nitride!” They looked at us like “Isn’t that awesome—amazing—incredible?!”

  The entrepreneur could not understand our lack of excitement. It was like they were thinking, Why aren’t you jumping up and down and screaming—and pouring money on us because we’re using silicon nitride?!

  The entrepreneur did not understand that we didn’t appreciate the extraordinarily compelling physics of their technology. This is an inability to bridge the gap between the entrepreneur’s expertise and where the audience is. The entrepreneur needs to communicate an understanding of why a novel technology can be the basis of a business or why a particular business model will be compelling to their customers. The entrepreneur needs to understand where the listener is, and bridge the knowledge.