Guidelines for a 5-minute verbal pitch (no slides/projectors):

1) What is your business in one sentence?

2) Pain point. Why would people use your service?

3) What is the product? How does one use it? What is the business model? (How do you make money?)

4) Current status. Prototype? Launched? How many users? Revenue?

5) Who are you and your team? Very brief background.

6) What are you looking for and what will you do with it? How will you get more users and grow the company?

The audience should know what your business is as soon as you start talking. Next you should show them the pain point, why your business is needed by the users. Then you talk about your product. Explain how it works and then touch on your business model slightly. Talk about the current status. Did you launch? How many users? How is the engagement? Then talk about the team very briefly. Then touch on how much money you are looking for and what you will do with it.

The goal is to pique the interest of the investor enough to get a second meeting.

Raising Venture Capital – article by Marc Suster.

Pitching a VC – article by David Hornik

Here is a TED Talk of David S. Rose (New York Angels) on Pitching to VC’s: