Product Market Fit

Product Market Fit

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Product Market Fit
Product Market Fit
Pitch the Way VCs think by Khosla Ventures
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How VCs Invest

Pitch the Way VCs think by Khosla Ventures

The full guide to pitch the way VCs think by Khosla Ventures + 3 real examples

Guillermo Flor's avatar
Guillermo Flor
Dec 22, 2024
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Product Market Fit
Product Market Fit
Pitch the Way VCs think by Khosla Ventures
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Before pitching to VCs, this is what you should know:

1. Investors bounce between fear & greed

  • Emotion is the reason to invest: feelings, stories, narratives not facts

  • Rationale is the reason to “explain investment or not invest”

  • Complexity scares investors; KISS works; jargon-free

  • Play games or hide things: good investors will notice

Judging you: be confident, transparent, humble… but don’t trigger BS meter!

2. Surprising truths

  • Message sent is OFTEN not the message received

  • Simplify: Tell the “story” well enough to get to complexity later

  • Steer into your investors’ objections! Don’t avoid them; ask

  • How do you become one of the 3 out of 1000’s in a 7 years?

Your goal: get to the next stage... get investors to dig in

3. Investors’ view of your business model

There are startups that know how they’ll make money & those that haven’t figured it out yet but can define options/tests to run

Technical startups should have technical risk & lower market risk

Series Seed, A, B have increasing specificity & more risks eliminated; Series C should be growth round. What do you de-risk with this round?

4. Your “first pitch” goal

  • Make sure investors know what you do in first 60 secs

  • Show why it is awesome: “If I can prove x, then…”

  • Show market is big enough or new to be exciting

  • You can or have figured out the product market fit

  • The technical risk is manageable & market obvious

And LAST the team is worth backing

You’re selling the partnership, through your sponsor VC, so give the individual partner the talking points to overcome all objections; pick the right partner

Hey there, if you are reading this is because you want to take your startup to the next level. If you are serious about it, I suggest you subscribe to the premium access of the Product Market Fit Newsletter. In it, you’ll find every valuable resource available for startup founders: pitch decks, investor lists, incubators, events, startup jobs and much more.

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Access the full Pitch the Way VCs think guide below + How 3 startups raised +3M

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