How to present your product to an investor or users?
Kiryl Sidarchuk is the COO Oyper and Oybox. It is two startups with the common neural network, recognize clothes items in the picture and video most accurately. He managed to get funds on the pre-seed round for Oybox in 7 minutes via Skype.
“Come up with an idea and do it” or “come up with an idea and test it”?
The top tip is to quickly and inexpensively test your idea for viability. Make a presentation and show it to potential buyers of the product and investors. Start MVP development only after receiving feedback or letters of intent from buyers.
This approach can save months of work and hundreds of thousands of dollars.
How to describe a product for a potential customer?
- Bring the advantages of your product to the attention of your customers, comparing it with competitors alternatives.
- Describe values for customers. They want to know whether your product or service will help reduce costs of their businesses by 50%, increase conversion by 30%, or increase productivity or whatever else; tell consumers about the estimated cost of your solution.
How to describe a product for an investor?
With regard to a presentation for investors, I would advise using the structure that 500 startups recommends.
Slide #1 Logo and elevator pitch Present your product in one sentence: [Product] helps [a specific target audience] with [Problem # 1] by bringing [Benefit # 1] using our [secret ingredient in your product, USP].
Slide #2 Describe the global problem in figures.
Slide #3 Describe your solution to this problem.
Slide #4 How does it work? Here is the perfect place for a video/demo of the product.
Slide #5 The predicted (or already existing) growth of an important indicator. It can be a total income, the number of product users, or a monthly increase of both income and users.
Slide #6 Describe the monetization process and business model. Briefly, explain how and at what stages of using your product you earn income.
Slide #7 Competitors. It is important to show why your product is special and how it excels alternatives from competitors. In other words, what is your unique selling proposition? You can use the following template: Unlike [existing alternatives], [your product] — [main distinguishing feature] and [minor distinguishing feature].
Slide #8 Describe the global goal that your product will achieve. You can rely on data from third-party market research. It may look like this: We want [how many?] people to use our product, the average bill is [how much?], and the number of purchases reaches [how many?] per year. And this will allow us to have an annual turnover of [X millions/billions] dollars.
Slide #9 Your progress as at the date of application. Describe what you’ve already passed and at what stage your product as a business.
Slide #10 The team. Here you should highlight the business experience of the founders, the deep expertise of the team, experienced in the selected industry and in sales or building an audience in similar projects/companies.
What are the key success determinants for a presentation?
At an early stage, you can get investment if at least one of the following conditions is met:
- The founders are rock stars in the industry in which they start a startup.
- The founders have previous successful startup experience.
- There is traction/progress (this is true for those who are just starting a startup path. Obtaining an agreement of intent is also considered).
If none of these conditions is met, you will not get funds.