It's Finally Time for Some New Classes
Entrepreneur Office Hours - Issue #224
Three-ish years ago I posted my first attempt at an online class. I’m guessing a lot of you have seen it because accessing it requires registering for this newsletter.
Let’s be honest… it’s not great. I mean, the information is valuable, but the production quality is circumspect.
Quite honestly, at the time, I had no clue what I was doing posting videos online, and the class was basically my first experiment with recording myself. Even though I didn’t love it I decided to post it and simultaneously swore I’d learn a lot more and get new classes launched soon after.
Fast forward three years, and that never happened… until now!
I’m excited to share I’ve finally gotten around to launching more online classes. Better yet, you can take one — for FREE!
I’ve just published three new classes. They’re called:
“Will My Idea Work” - A framework for how to quickly validate startup ideas (a re-working of the original class).
“How to Give the Perfect Pitch” - An overview of how to give great sales, funding, and stage pitches.
“How to Send Emails That Get Replies” - A crash course in how to send incredible emails, which, as I’ve written before, is an entrepreneurial superpower.
You can access all of the new classes here. To watch one, you’ll have to give your email address, but, since you’re already getting this email from me, giving me your email address again shouldn’t be a big concern.
I hope you enjoy the new courses, and I hope you learn something useful. If you do, I hope you’ll consider sharing the link with someone else who’d get value from them, too.
-Aaron
This week’s new articles…
Your Startup’s First Customers Are Easy to Get When You Target These Types of People
Lots of people could be potential customers for your startup, but only a small number will be easy to convince. Here’s how to find them.
There’s a Reason March Madness Is Worth Billions of Dollars
What if studying successful sporting events like March Madness was the key to building successful startups?
Office Hours Q&A
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QUESTION:
Hey Aaron,
Hope things are going great! I'm currently running a startup that’s trying to ramp up for our seed round. There's one thing I'm curious about that I think could make a big difference for us:
When approaching potential investors for a seed round, how important is it to tailor our pitch to align with each investor's specific interests and portfolio themes, versus presenting a more generalized, broad-appeal pitch? What's been your experience or observation on this?
Appreciate any light you can shed on this!
Best,
Ollie
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Congrats on getting to the point where you think you’re ready for a seed round. That’s a great place to be and it sounds like you’re being thoughtful about the best way to approach it.
If I’m being honest, in this particular case, I think I’d challenge the premise of the question. Pitching isn’t about tailoring what you’re saying to match the needs of investors. Remember, you’re not trying to sell them anything. You’re the customer!
Rather than trying to “trick” them into investing in you by figuring out what they want to hear and telling them whatever that is, you should go in and show investors exactly what you’ve built and why it needs investment. This means focusing on traction.
Traction, traction, traction!
If you’re genuinely ready for investment and you have good traction relative to your funding stage, this should be easy to do. When investors hear what you’ve accomplished, they’ll be able to do the work of figuring out if/how it fits into their portfolio themes without any help from you.
By the way, if you can’t go into a pitch and focus on traction (whatever that might look like in your specific industry), and if you feel like you really should be changing your deck with each pitch so it better suits the investors you’re talking with, it might mean you’re not actually ready to raise a seed round. With this in mind, first and foremost, be honest with yourself. If, after you’re honest with yourself, you’re sure it’s time to raise some seed capital, go show investors what you’ve accomplished and let them decide how it matches their investment thesis.
P.S. Some people might try to argue “seed stage” doesn’t need traction. I would disagree. While “Friends and family” funding often doesn’t need traction, seed stage investors are going to need to see some genuine validation. It might not be huge amounts of customers and revenue, but you’ll still need more than just an idea. The “more,” in this case, is your traction.
Got startup questions of your own? Reply to this email with whatever you want to know, and I’ll do my best to answer!
