Tag Archives: BDL Accelerate

Deliver the Perfect Pitch

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In today’s competitive climate, entrepreneurs must stand out. Whether you are pitching to a large audience at a conference or to investors, it is crucial that you present the perfect pitch. Usually, you have less than 5 minutes to deliver a compelling pitch convincing potential investors, partners, and customers to select you.

First of all, developing the perfect presentation is essential:
Introduction:
On your first slide you should only have your logo. This is when you will introduce yourself and any essential team members.
Problem Statement:
Start your pitch with the problem statement, tell it in a story, state how big the problem is, back it up with numbers.
Solution Statement:
The solution to the problem you mentioned is your product/service. This is where you tell the audience the name of your product/service, and summarize your business in a clear, concise and compelling manner in a maximum of 2 to 3 sentences. These are your key messages. Explain how your product/service solves the problem.
How it works:
Now that you have introduced the solution, explain how it works. Is it an app? A webpage? How do they select the product/service? Do they pay for it? If so, how? Have users already used your product/service? If so, what were the positive feedbacks? This is the part where you can show off your prototype, show progress you have made, and how your team handled any challenges or pressure.
Facts:
Interview customers or conduct surveys beforehand. This is where you can insert facts on satisfied customers, with possible quotes.
How money is made:
What is your business model? How do you generate revenue?
The market:
Who is your customer base? How large is the market? Do you have competitors? Who are they and how are you better than them?
Marketing:
This is where you state your market-entry strategy entailing how you will reach out to early adopters, acquire and expand customers, etc.
Financials:
Only state key numbers: The initial investment your business needs to start, your pricing strategy, break-even forecast, etc.
End with a big bang:
Summarize with these points: that you have identified a problem, you have created and developed a solution to that problem, that you have a clear and winning market-entry strategy and the amount you need to start.

Additional tips:
– Don’t procrastinate to create your presentation.
– Don’t overload with content since it could overwhelm your audience.
– Practice your presentation until you are comfortable with it and perfect your delivery style.
– Understand your audience before you step on stage.
– When delivering your presentation, make sure your posture is comfortable and controlled.
– Use hand gestures effectively to enhance your presentation.
– Try not to stand behind a podium while delivering so that you are not separated from the audience.
– Make eye contact with the audience.
– Don’t glue your face to your notes.

Don’t forget that this may be your only chance to pitch your startup so don’t procrastinate in developing your presentation and be prepared. Good luck!

How Startups Can Attract Investors

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For the first-time entrepreneur or founder, looking for seed stage funding may prove to be challenging. Many startup founders look for advice to pitch to investors while their idea is still at a concept stage. The biggest challenge most of them face is they don’t know how to attract investors and what factors influence their decision to invest.

Before understanding how to attract investors, a startup founder needs to learn where to find investors to reach them.

  1. Friends and family:
    Your friends and family know you best. They know your strengths and all your negative attributes. However, if you decide to go with this option, let them understand that investing in a startup is a risky affair and they should only invest if they are willing to take the chance to risk their money. Don’t forget, mixing business with personal relationships can turn into a messy affair.
  2. Individual Angel Investors:
    Another route you can take to raise investment is to find an individual who is prepared to invest in the idea of a startup. The investor has to understand your area of expertise and could bring value to your startup. Think of people you may know who fit the criteria, or of people you know who are connected to such individuals, to make an introduction pitch.
  3. Angel Investor Firms/ Venture Capital Firms
    These firms are continuously seeking to make investments in startups. Check the map of Lebanon’s startup ecosystem to see the list of the major players looking to invest in Lebanese startup companies. With firms such as these, you could raise a much larger investment than from an individual.
  4. Startup Advisors/ Accelerators.
    Startup advisors would understand you better and guide you in the right direction. They would also assist in bringing in the right investors for your startup.

Once you have decided on which route you want to take, understand what it is that investors look for in a startup before you approach them.

  1. Experienced Entrepreneurs:
    The investors prefer more experienced entrepreneurs rather than someone who is completely new in the field; however, don’t be discouraged if you do not have the experience, as this is a completely new field and is not the only contributing factor.
  2. Team:
    Investors will check the entrepreneur and the team, if one exists. They prefer entrepreneurs who are passionate and excited about their idea and their vision, who are tenaciously willing to stick to their vision through challenges and obstacles, who are willing to reevaluate and adapt their plans when needed, who are capable of working with a team, understand their market, and are coachable.
  3. Customers:
    All investors are going to take a look at your customer base. You will have to consider the acceptability of the product in the market. What would compel someone to buy your product or service? What problems would your product solve and how is it better than the alternatives? Positive responses to questions such as these will be a major factor to attract investors.
  4. Opportunity:
    Investors are constantly seeking big ideas that can create an impact, change our behavior or our way of thinking. They also consider if the market is ready to embrace your big idea or if it is an opportunity that the world will not be able to recognize for several years, hence the payoff will be delayed.
  5. Business Model:
    Investors will definitely look at your business model in terms of analyzing if the model is profitable, expandable, repeatable, predictable, and so forth. By studying where revenue will come from and challenging the expenses it would take to generate that revenue, the investor can decide if this investment is worthwhile. Moreover, your business model will assist the investor in creating a probable plan on when they would be able to generate profit and exit accordingly.

 Self-evaluate your startup based on these tips, and if you find areas where you do not excel in, work on improving them. The extra time you invest will significantly help your chances of getting invested in.

Christina Bechhold – Samsung’s Global Innovation Center

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Christina Bechhold
Samsung’s Global Innovation Center
Senior Associate, Strategic Investment team

Christina Bechhold is a Senior Associate with the Strategic Investment team at Samsung’s Global Innovation Center. She is also Co-Founder and Managing Director of a New York based angel group, Empire Angels, investing in tech enabled startups focusing on supporting young entrepreneurs. In addition, Christina is a regular contributor to the Wall Street Journal’s startup blog, the Accelerators, serves as a Venture for America mentor, and is a member of VFA’s Women’s Initiative Committee. Christina was previously a Vice President at Citigroup with background in capital markets, emerging markets, and structured finance. She is also Vice President of the Board of Governors of the Hotchkiss School Alumni Association. Additionally, Christina serves as Chairman of Hope on a String.

Samsung’s Global Innovation Center partners with entrepreneurs and startups in various ways. The center can incubate the new entrepreneurial ideas through their accelerator programs, invest in early stage startups, or acquire startups that are strategically significant to Samsung’s businesses. Christina focuses on early stage investments in software and service startups.

As an experienced financial professional, Christina brings her background in finance and emerging markets to her role as an angel investor at Empire Angels, where she focuses on mentoring startups, fundraising and operations. She invests in a couple of startups a year. Her past investments include MyDROBE, an interactive website for style and fashion, Human Demand, Inc., a mobile demand side platform, and Basno, a platform for digital goods.

As someone keen on supporting and assisting emerging markets, in her role serving on the board of Hope on a String, a grassroot non-profit organization that aims to foster an environment of social transformation and economic development in Haiti through participating in music, Christina has helped finance projects in various countries in Latin America, Africa, Eastern Europe, and the Middle East.

Christina will be one of the 100 seasoned entrepreneurs speaking at BDL Accelerate 2015 taking place on December 10th and 11th and Forum de Beyrouth in Lebanon.

Map of Lebanese Startup Ecosystem

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A startup ecosystem is formed by several components interacting as a system to create and sustain startup companies. As Lebanon’s startup ecosystem has been thriving with the rise of more startup companies, dedicated investors, accelerators, educational institutions, and more, we have created the map of the current startup ecosystem in Lebanon overviewing all the components and major players.

chart---lebanon

The Lean Startup Methodology

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Conventionally, the first thing every entrepreneur must do is create a business plan that entails a 5 year forecast for income, profits, and cash flow along with the size of an opportunity the service or product that the venture will provide. The belief is that it is possible to figure out the unknowns of a business in advance as well as the calculative risks before you raise money to execute the idea. Once the entrepreneur has developed a solid business plan with minimal risks, they would approach investors to obtain money, and then start developing the product. Thousands of hours would be invested to develop the product and prepare to launch it with very little or no customer feedback. It is only after the product is launched, months or years after development, that the venture would receive substantial customer feedback, and more often than not, learn that the customer does not need or want most of the product’s features.

Startups are not smaller versions of large companies that follow a master plan forecasting complete unknowns. One of the differences is that whilst businesses execute a business model, startups try to create one. Entrepreneurs tend to be visionaries with a stubborn determination to cross any obstacles to see their vision become a success. Successful startups usually go from failure to failure while adapting their features and improving their ideas by learning from customer feedback. This reality has fostered a popular startup methodology, ‘the lean startup’, which dramatically improves the efficiency and speed of these corrections and improvements and minimizes the risk of starting a company. Eric Reis, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur who, throughout his career, has experienced success and failure with high-tech startups, developed the lean startup methodology to help startups succeed.

Steve Blank is a successful serial entrepreneur who mentored Eric Reis, and it was his teachings on allowing customers to test product features and provide valuable feedback that resonated with Ries who would use this methodology as a cornerstone of the lean startup movement. Lean manufacturing, a Japanese production philosophy that minimizes inventory throughout the assembly line to avoid any expenditure that does not lead to a goal other than the creation of value for the end customer, inspired the lean startup philosophy.

Similarly to the principles of lean manufacturing, the lean startup philosophy seeks to eliminate inefficient and wasteful practices during the product development stage and to increase practices that add value. This increases the chances of a startup’s success by minimizing the required funding amount, and without requiring business plans or even the perfect product. Customer feedback is essential during the product development phase in the lean startup practice. By releasing a non-finalized minimum viable product, startups can use customer feedback to tailor their product to the specific needs of its customer. The purpose is to assess the specific needs of the consumer and to meet those needs using the least amount of resources possible. Favoring experimentation over elaborate planning, customer feedback over intuition, and iterative design over conventional design development, the lean startup methodology has taken root in the startup world and is now being taught in business schools. The methodology has changed the conventional wisdoms about entrepreneurship, and ventures around the world have been following its principles in an attempt to improve their chances of success.

Below is a brief overview of the lean startup methodology process:the-lean-startup_50291668aa9bb_w15001. Sketch out your hypotheses:
Instead of spending months planning and researching and then writing a lengthy business plan, jot down your hypotheses in a framework called the ‘business model canvas’ (see image below). The business model canvas allows you to look at all 9 building blocks of your business on one page, each component containing a series of hypotheses you need to test.

Sketch-hypotheses2. Listen to Customers
Lean startups use a ‘get out of the building’ approach using ‘customer development’ to test out their hypotheses. In this phase you go out and ask potential users, purchasers, and partners for feedback on all the business model elements. The feedback collected should be on features, pricing, distribution and customer acquisition strategies. Continue repeating this step as the product idea matures.

3. Quick, agile development
This is the stage in the process in which startups create the minimum viable products they test. Instead of traditional production that may last for months, agile development builds the minimum viable product only containing the critical features, in short and repeated cycles through gathering feedback from customers and revising.

In addition to the lean startup methodology being adopted by entrepreneurs around the world, and added to business schools’ curricula, it is being introduced by organizations and startup conferences around the world to thousands of potential entrepreneurs. The learn startup method will be introduced and practiced during workshops at BDL Accelerate 2015 which you can apply to attend.