Don’t be dishonest

Welcome to the fifth and final lesson in this part of the module. In the previous lesson we learned about the benefits of delivering your pitch confidently on how investors perceive you. In this one, we’re going to cover why it’s so important to make sure you come across as honest when presenting and provide you with guidance on how to do so.

Let’s start.

VCs are fond of saying that the relationship between a startup and an investor is longer than the average marriage. The length of these relationships means that, when deciding whether or not to invest, VCs are extremely sensitive to founder dishonesty.

Put simply, if an investor catches a founder deliberately lying, they will automatically hit the reject button regardless of how good the business is.

That said, outright lying is relatively rare among founders. What’s far more common are founders who stretch the truth a little too much. I’m talking about founders who are constantly bragging about how they have 20k users just for you to find out later that only 2k of them are active. Or founders who never seem to be able to directly answer the question “how much MRR do you have?”. They aren’t lying, they just come across as slimy.

If this is you, I want you to know that you aren’t fooling anyone. You sound like a weasel.

While being slimy isn’t as bad as being an outright liar, it will make investors dislike you. And VCs tend to invest in founders that they like. So here are some things to avoid if you don’t want to create this impression:

• Don’t answer questions like a politician
• Don’t make up answers when you’re unsure
• Don’t pretend you have deals, revenue or even term sheets that you don’t have
• Don’t use misleading metrics without clarification

Trust me, you aren’t fooling anyone.

Conclusion

With dishonesty covered, we’ve now completed the last lesson in this section of the module.

While it hasn’t been possible to cover absolutely everything you can do to enhance your pitching style and therefore how your team is perceived, the tips we’ve provided over the last few lessons are a very good starting point. I’m confident that, if you follow them, you can improve how VCs see your team without a single fact about your startup changing.

Aside from following these five tips, my only other presentation advice is to practice with anyone who's willing to listen to you – whether it's with your cousin or a VC. I'd recommend doing at least ten practice pitches before you start scheduling real investor meetings.

With presentation style covered, we’re now ready to move on to the final two sections of this module. In them we're going to cover the last bits of information you need to successfully present your team to VCs, namely:

1. Hygiene – Which team members to talk about and what red flags to avoid
2. When, where and how to include information about your team in both your meetings and your fundraising materials

The next lesson explains how to pick which team members to talk about in your meetings.