Friday, August 28, 2009

Small Accomplishments are Your Most Compelling Stories

Personal stories showing how your new product or service solves a problem or meets a need are a great way to lead your two-minute presentation. Stories can be engaging, especially when written in the first person. But in the two-minute format, you can only afford about 25 words for your lead. So keep it brief.

Get to the point quickly and spend more time answering the questions posed in the Two-Minute Forum checklist available on the MVF website under Two-Minute Documents. The checklist is the result of feedback on hundreds of presentations. Following the checklist will also keep you within the bounds of Securities & Exchange Commission securities regulations.

When writing your presentation, remember that the dollars you seek will not solve problems on their own. Funding simply helps you scale solutions that you should have already defined, if not implemented. Have you tested your solutions through sales, working closely with customers, beta tests, small-scale implementations or other direct customer feedback? If so, make sure to cover it. Relate the assistance you seek to achieving milestones that you have already defined. Few investors will fund a project that is still meandering toward an unknown solution.

Every venture boasts hockey-stick growth. So spend most of your pitch on explaining what you can accomplish in the short term. Then do it. Meeting your forecasts is more likely to reassure investors that you can follow through and achieve return on their investment. So what are your near-term milestones? Which ones have you met? What is the reasonable next step to take? Relate your funding needs to that step, and convince investors that step-by-step you can get to real and significant growth.

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