What Do I Look for in a Pitch?
Founders will often ask me, “Do you want to go through our deck?”
It’s not about the slide deck. We have made the decision to invest in entrepreneurs without slides, whose ambition, passion, depth of understanding of an opportunity and compelling vision come through crystal-clear in conversation.
But…that’s a high bar for communication. Most of the time, putting a business plan on paper helps you structure a … [ Read more ]
Content: Article | Author: Sarah Guo | Source: LinkedIn | Subjects: Entrepreneurship, Venture Capital
Sarah Guo
It’s worth thinking about whether you are a category creator or disruptor. If you are creating a category, focus on market risk — do users really feel the pain and want this? Is there budget out there? If you are trying to take over a category, then what are the dynamics, the changes in technology or environment, the 10x better that will allow you to … [ Read more ]
Content: Quotation | Author: Sarah Guo | Source: LinkedIn | Subjects: Entrepreneurship, Strategy
Sarah Guo
Great entrepreneurs can change and expand markets, even consumer attitudes. Total focus on solving a problem for a customer you understand helps you dominate a “small market,” and dominance of a tactical, small market gives an agile and ambitious team a wedge to grow from. Many great companies start from a tactical feature in a space full of problems. Initially, they must fight to maintain … [ Read more ]
Content: Quotation | Author: Sarah Guo | Source: LinkedIn | Subject: Entrepreneurship
Sarah Guo
A company is a great story told again and again, to recruits, investors, media, customers, and partners, until it’s real.
Content: Quotation | Author: Sarah Guo | Source: LinkedIn | Subjects: Entrepreneurship, Miscellaneous
Sarah Guo
Some entrepreneurs validate customer need through years of having lived the problem. Others go native with users — survey and interview them, show mocks and prototypes, do demand testing by “selling” or advertising a product they haven’t built yet, even get customers to partner and co-develop with them. There’s no replacement for shipping a product and getting adoption, engagement and revenue data. But that is … [ Read more ]
Content: Quotation | Author: Sarah Guo | Source: LinkedIn | Subjects: Customer Related, Entrepreneurship