You might call it, “I pitched my business to venture capitalists and lived to tell the story.” Scott Gerber, who wrote this piece for Entrepreneur.com, called it 6 Steps to the Perfect Pitch. He didn’t get the money, but he learned a lot:
As you might have guessed, I didn’t walk out of that meeting with a $15 million check. I later realized, however, that this was one of the greatest educational experiences of my young career. I learned more about real-world fundraising in 30 minutes than many entrepreneurs learn in a lifetime. To this day, whenever I pitch investors for capital, I always remember these six hard-learned lessons:
And as you can tell from the context, he goes on to share six well-written lessons, as well as a lively retelling of a pitch session that didn’t work, including the interruptions, the questions he answered wrongly, and the disappointing result. (The article is no longer available on Entrepreneur.com.)
To learn more about creating the perfect pitch, read Noah Parsons’ article, The 7 Key Components of a Perfect Elevator Pitch [With Video] on Bplans.com.
Tim Berry is the founder and chairman of Palo Alto Software and Bplans.com. Follow him on Twitter @Timberry.
