Angel Investing: The Gust Guide to Making Money and Having Fun Investing in Startups

7

Here Comes the Pitch

Listening to the Story Does It Make Sense for Your Portfolio?

ONCE YOU HAVE identified a potential opportunity it is time to get down to brass tacks and meet with the company. Your first goal is to make an initial determination of whether the entrepreneur has the characteristics listed in Chapter 6, and is the kind of person in whom you'd want to invest. You are also going to run through a basic checklist to see if there are any warning signs that would cause you to pass on the opportunity.

The point here is not to make an investment decision; instead, it's the opposite: you are doing a negative screen to see if there are any issues that would stop you from investing. This is the beginning of a series of rituals that will either result in your deciding not to put money into a particular company (which is what happens in the vast majority of instances) or in your deciding to take the plunge and become a part owner of a fledgling new business.

At the first meeting, for which you should expect to allocate about an hour, the entrepreneur will typically pitch his or her company. There are several ways the entrepreneur may choose to do this, including jumping right into a demonstration of the product or service or simply talking conversationally. However, the most typical approach is for the founder to give a comprehensive overview of the company, 15 to 20 minutes long, supported by a computer-based, on-screen slide presentation usually created with Microsoft's ...