Pitch

So you have a great idea for a start up and you want to try to get funding from an established venture capital firm. You have hired the private equity attorney who was referred to you by a trusted mentor as the go to private equity attorney on the Street, or Silicon Valley. And you think your mentor may be right, because low and behold, you have gotten the impossible hour long meeting with the private equity group.

Now you are a tangle of nerves. What are you going to do? The best advice I can give you is to spend some quality time working on your pitch. The way you pitch your idea to the venture capitalists, the more likely you will achieve success in getting them to fund your project.

Venture capitalists want to fund projects. They are looking for good deals. So know your product inside out. Ask all the what ifs before you go in for the pitch. Play devil's advocate with yourself and your partners. If you do have partners make sure everybody is on the same page and that they understand the product, market, channels of distribution, trouble shooting, etc.

The idea is to impress the venture capitalists so much that their enthusiam for your project gets the better of them. If you can't pitch the idea, you won't be able to convince and persuade the venture capitalist to take you on.

And the art of the pitch is applicable to scenarios that do not necessarily involve vc's. It could be a bank you are trying to persuade to give you a small business loan, or the SBA, or your uncle Mitch.

Or maybe you are pitching a potential client or customer. The rules are the same. Persuade, impress, and know your stuff inside and out. Make it so that their enthusiam for you and your project/product/services, gets the better of them and they have no other choice but to say YES.