Mary Schmidt Marketing Troubleshooter

I was an advisor for the TVC Capital Equity Symposium for a couple of years. This is an annual event where hopeful entrepreneurs come to present to VCs and angels from all over the country. Each presenter has a team of advisors to assist with revising their business plan (if they have one) and putting together an effective presentation. They then go through a couple of dry runs of the presentation (which is limited to 10 minutes) in which all the advisors critique both content and style.

It gets brutal. Grown men - even veterans of other start-ups - start to shake and sweat. Masters of the Universe would ask little ol’ blonde me,”But do you like it?” with pleading puppy dog eyes. Unfortunately, my answer was almost always “No.”

Investors are a tough crowd; they’ve seen thousands of boilerplate business plans and “leading-edge solutions” pitches. They’re looking for the Three Ps:

1. Passion. The men (and they are almost always men) are so concerned about looking stupid that they drone in a monotone, don’t move their arms and do their best to stick to just reading their text-heavy slides (no “cute” illustrations or examples, that’s scary!) “Just the facts, m’am, just the facts.” Doesn’t give the audience confidence the guy can stay in it for the long haul - or that he can incite passion in his employees.

2. Personality. If the presenter stays in his/her safe zone in a simple 10 minute presentation, their potential investors are wondering, Do I want to spend more time with them? Can they readily adapt to all the challenges of a start-up? Do they have what it takes - in both cojones and brains? Can I work with this person if I invest in them? The presenters who go for “safe” are real lonely in the exhibit hall after the presentations.

3. Profit. Yep, that silly marketing stuff always comes up - nothing happens until you sell something. Scary smart techies get so focused on the deep dark minute details, they forget that the VCs and angels want to - um - make money. One of the biggest questions is always, “So, how are you going to sell it?” A boilerplate (safe) answer doesn’t cut it. Out in the real world, people don’t buy because you’ve got a patent - they buy because you’re offering them something they want and/or need.

The most successful presenters were the ones who covered all three of these - and did it with a light touch and glint in their eye. They weren’t afraid to “look stupid.” They were sufficiently confident to appear human to their fellow humans - even cracked a smile and joke or two when the presentation hit a glitch.

Somehow I don’t think looking stupid ever even occurred to the founders of Google or Yahoo (Those “silly, stupid” names - that’ll never work!) - much less to Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison, or Bill Gates. And, Donald Trump has built a whole industry around his personality (ridiculous though it may be.)

Related Post: Marketing Messages: “Cute” Phobia

Tags: business development, entrepreneurship, entrepreneur sanity check, Google, Yahoo