For startups, investment from Venture Capitals (VC) is fundamental. For the sake of getting injected, various ways and methods have been taken, such as joining investor night events or sending e-mail to investors. Here, we will present the best pitching strategy via e-mail.
Will it work? YES.
“Yes, it might work, at least in our company, we always read every incoming pitching e-mails and follow up those which are cutting-edge enough by phone,” said Patrick Mathieson of Toba Capital.
Storm Ventures’ Managing Director Jason M Lemkin is also on the same page. “It is possible on one condition: the pitching e-mail must be perfect!”
Question is, how perfect is perfect? Check out these poweful tips given by Mathieson himself.
- Make it as clear and straightforward as possible. You don’t have all the space in the world to talk about rubbish, as thousands of other startups do the same. Make yourself clear from the very beginning.
- Double check your grammar, spelling, or other typos.
- Avoid putting too many business slogans. If you write me about your journey to create the “predictive analysis for big data”, I’ll put you into my bin immediately.
- Should you want to add a revenue prediction, just put one year to come, not two years nor more. Putting too many years ahead will make you sound like a fortune teller.
- Attach your plan our business package.
- Make sure that the VC you contact is appropriate with your business line.
- Make your e-mail personal, don’t let them know that you send the same e-mail to hundreds or even thousands VCs. Add one paragraph or two telling about how well you know the VC.
Other than those pre-mentioned tips, Mathieson added that the e-mail must have a super solid metric, 100 percent clear value proposition, and no follow up. Don’t bombard VCs with 70 follow up e-mails merely asking about the project development. If the VCs are interested, they’ll let you know.
