What are some points that Pakistani/Indian Entrepreneurs keep in mind about venture Capitalists?
Venture capitalists are people who are going to invest in your business idea and that they see some potential in your idea, here is the completely researched article that are based on taking notes from famous sites like forbes.com and entrepreneur.com
Table of contents
1. Your Idea and Your Team
2. Is your idea has any future?
3. Is your idea unique?
4. Can you execute your idea successfully?
5. Your Qualifications
6. Your Past
7. Motivation you have
8. Market Research
9. Your Product and your authority of product
10. Your First month Salary
11. Presentation and communication skills
Venture capitalists are humans not aliens and Might some believe that your idea has potential while other disagree with but most of the VCs go with the above eleven mentioned steps.
1. Your Idea and Your Team
Your idea is what you want to do, what type of problem you would solve and how you approach to that solution for. You may hear the famous sentence that every human say, “I have an Idea” Everyone has idea but which idea is worth full that is the biggest task and VCs know that better how to get out nut out of nutshell.
I once got the opportunity to go to a place where a lot of entrepreneur presenting their ideas and a question that every time go with my ear is “How is in your team?” or Please Introduce your team”
Can You Know the person who has great team won $2500 and VCs promised them of investing in there Startup, so a great Team is Very Important for your success.
2. Is Your Idea has Any Future?
This hard question but still if we study the history we can know that VCs reject most of the world big startups because they find no potential. Take the example of Uber, when they approach one of the VC named Mark Cuban, he rejected the idea of Uber and told them he did not find any potential in this idea but later time prove him wrong and right know Uber is the silicon valley hottest startup.
Take the example of Google, with the dot com burst investors find out a lot of opportunities but dot com era go in to crash and Google decide to give up but no one is there for buying Google, but as time goes Google is right now the No.1 Search engine and the most visited website on earth.
If you want to be, succeed in any field of life you must need to go with your own mind, heart, and must believe in yourself. The above two stories validate these three points.
3. Is Your Idea Unique?
Is your idea unique to present them in front of Venture capitalist? In Pakistan and India if you are presenting idea then most of the VCs take the
By a unique idea mean that you approach a general problem with a unique solution, Think of Yahoo! Answers they have a good idea but a poor Website design but then Quora comes which overtake Yahoo! Answers with better design and quality answers.
4. Can you execute your idea successfully?
In the business world there is a saying that if you have a poor idea but good execution you will rock, but if you have the mind blowing idea and a weaker execution you will end up with a loss statement.
Can you know, when mark Zuckerberg make Facebook there are already social media sites exist but what Mark have others do not. Mark Zuckerberg executes his great idea with a good execution and they all end up when Facebook step in into online market. That is the power of execution.
5. Your Qualification
Self-explainable but still need little introduction, VCs when hear your idea they curious about your qualification, this mean I need to be a Ph.D. or Doctor or an Engineer. The answer may be Yes or No, if you make a product that required high technical skills and have no co-founder then you need to be at least an expert on that product, if you have not a technical person and have a good product, you have then the chances that VCs accept you. VCs want to compound their money but for compounding, they need someone who helped them to achieve their benchmark.
6. Your past
Your past here don’t mean, how you propose your Girlfriend or why you don’t like to eat banana? That are the questions that don’t matter to VCs they want to know about your past that what type of startups you work? Can you ever have a failed startup? Alternatively, can you ever get a VCs funding before?
What if I have no past experience? Tell them on spot that this is your first startup and I will work with full confidence to get this startup into the peak.
7. Motivation You have
Facebook Motto is “Connecting the world” Google motto is “Don’t be evil” Apple motto is “Think Different” What types of motto your business or what you think of your business. Can you just want money or nothing?
One of the Top Quora writer and VCs named Gordon Miller once said he also rejected Uber idea. Actually he like Uber idea but the problem is Uber has no rules related to the safety of passenger and driver, and at the same time if a female is driving then how she will be protected about harassment or using of bad words.
Look, Money is not just everything. Your motivation must be to help people and think money as a side effect of that service not based on profit-loss statement.
8. Market Research
Once a VCs receive an email where a person writes
“I have a million dollar idea and my idea is I want to open a hotel in place X where there is no such type of item available”
The VCs is a very smart person he open a new tab and type
“Place X Hotels” he discover that all such items where in those hotels.
End of the story is always doing a market research otherwise ready for a super insult.
Once I got a chance to visit a place where entrepreneurs presenting their ideas and more than 50% of ideas they have are all copied from China or US and every time VCs tell them that I see such type of thing in China or such type of thing in my country.
So, always to in depth research and never rest in peace tell you got the answers you looking for, Google is your friend, use it.
9. Your Product and your authority of product
What type of product you is going to present in front of your consumers is that value $20 or $200 or even more. Then we have to talk about how many people has the purchasing power to buy that product? Like a product of $1000 has lesser people to buy then $10, if you are earning $2 on $10 product and $100 on $1000 product then may be $2 profit is better then $100 because if just one person is there for you to buy $1000 product then there are may be 200 people to buy $10 product.
By authority of product i mean the usefulness of your product, as if internet has a high authority than any washing powder, or Google is a high authority product then Yahoo!
10. Your first month salary
The basic question that a VC may ask you as an entrepreneur that “How Much Money will you pay yourself if I invest in your company?
Answer to this question is “I will take so much money that helps me to live on this earth and nothing extra” Take the minimum amount that just enough for your food.
VC will easily impress from your confidence, Dedication, Hard work and sacrifices you made to give your startup an edge.
11. Presentation and communication skills
Most of the VCs do not hear what you are telling them they just see you, they notice your every action and ask some question they have about your personality or idea and here they go.
These are some points that any of the Pakistani/Indian entrepreneur must kept in mind while approaching a VC.
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