Your Product Sucks; Stop Telling Me About It.

Easiest way to fail in your pitch.

Ok. You are in Stoke City. You got that meeting with that one investor that will make all the difference to your startup.

You meet with her. She listens. She shows interest. You spend a long time talking about the product. She is excited about the road map. You leave smiling, and never hear from the investor again.

What did you do wrong?

As founders, we spend hours on hours building a product. We know everything about it, down to the bad line of code that caused the screen to rotate 90 degrees if you angle the phone at exactly 57 degrees on a Tuesday.

As investors, we are supporting companies. We care about the future potential of the business you are building. We want to know that in a market we are interested in, you will be able to do something special.

Why do you think the first thing we talk about is the team? If an investor believes in you and your passion around a market the likelihood of an investment skyrockets. Love the product but iffy on the market or team? No chance in God’s green earth you will get an investment, or you can be sure you will be replaced at the earliest convenience.

It’s comfortable for us as founders to talk about the product we have built. It’s easy, and we love the positive reaction we get from others. Founders will talk to other founders for hooooooouuuuuurrrrrs about product. Shoot, an entire company was born and raised a chunk of cash because of how truthy that statement is.

It’s hard to talk about the market or potential business. Too many unknowns. We love statements like “We invest in teams,” or “any revenue projections you come up with are BS.” Allows us to pitch on product, not business. So much easier.

Here are some things you can do prior to pitching:

• Open excel. Figure out what it will take for you to hit $100mm ARR in 5 years. How fast does it happen? Is it realistic? Ok, stop being optimistic, is it still realistic? Your goal is to look for Invisible Ceilings. An Invisible Ceiling is a point where the business cannot get any bigger even if Steve Jobs was running the joint.
• Understand the potential expenses of your business over the first couple of years. Whatever you come up, add 50%, because you are still being too optimistic. Stop that.
• Learn everything past, present and future about the market. Know it better than the Stanford GSB student that is properly interning for the investor and trying to show off. Hate those people, making our lives hard.
• Stop being in love with your product. Most likely you will shoot it in the head and kill it in the months ahead. Or give it a major make over. Either way, it will die. I honestly am less excited about a specific feature or UI element as I am about the thought behind the product; the whys it exists; the pieces of the product that you can see fully engaging your users either now or in the future. I love early products that strive to own 5 minutes of a user’s day. Every day. And has a clear path to own more minutes over time. You have 1,440 daily minutes available. How are you going to own them all and how long will that take?

Another side effect of leaning on your product less is that you will be embarrassed less and then provide less excuses for all the pieces of your product that don’t exist yet. Understand that investors know its lacking, after all if it was perfect, you wouldn’t be in our office, right?

It’s fine to love your product; but pitch your business. After all, you are trying to land an investor/user, not just a user.