Interested in "Venture Capital" but do not have presentation skills?

Question

I am someone who has a good business ideas that would require start up funding. Venture Capital would be a good start but I DO NOT POSSESS THE REQUIRED PRESENTATION SKILLS to present the idea(s) to investors. Could not put together a good business plan by myself and probably could not give speech in front of a group of investors if i had to. Any suggestions on how to get around this?

Answer 1

Getting VC financing involves much more than presentation skills. In fact, most VCs are less concerned about polished presentation ability than your knowledge and capabilities. Also, it is not about the idea as much as you might think. It is more about the team and your ability to build a business around either a new technology, product(s) or a powerful business model.

The key to a good VC presentation is mostly about content. It needs to be well-thought with a logical flow and one that sticks to the key parameters they are interested in - market size, your technology, intellectual property, your busines model, managment team, etc.

Its important to understand that VCs primarily invest in great management teams and/or exceptional technologists. They are more interested in great people than they are a technology or business ideas from someone that doesn't have the backgound and experience to see it through to success. So, if you don't have the background, I strongly recommend you get it before pitching your idea. You really need to have either several years of senior corporate expience in the right area for your venture or be a technical expert in the field of your products/business model. If you don't want to wait until you acquire the knowledge yourself, you need to recruit it into your team. Good luck.

Answer 2

I would check out these two websites:

www.score.org - small business counselors of America

and

www.sba.gov - small business administration

(best of all they're free services)

Both have a number of education tools, financing options, and much more. In your situation i would try Score first because they will assign you a Counselor usually from an area of your need. All of which is confidential.

I am not sure about your student status, but a lot of Business Schools offer Business Plan competitions one example is MIT -www.mit100k.org. When ready, you could team up with a student to compete.

Hope this helped, and feel free to add me to contacts!

Best Regards,

Bernard