What questions should the project answer before going to an investor?
Before scheduling meetings and communication with investors, it is important to work out answers to questions in advance that will allow you to understand the degree of readiness of the project, as well as analyze the compliance of the project with the investment focus of investors.
In the process of preparing an investment presentation, you can cover most of the issues, but if you give too much detail, you can overload the slides with information, so it is important to determine the primary and additional information that will allow you to give more depth and details of the level of project development.
Our recommendations on the structure of the slides, as well as the process and stages of project financing, will be revealed in the following useful articles on attracting investments.
We suggest conditionally dividing the topics of questions into blocks:
1. Market
2. Product
3. Clients
4. Business model
5. History of the company
6. Management
7. Competition
8. Finance
9. Intellectual property
In each block, we see fifteen or more questions that are worth identifying first and then revealing. This information is unique and may be useful in the development of a number of company documents, including the general presentation of the project (pitch deck), business plan, business development strategy, etc.
An example of disclosure of questions on the topic “MARKET”:
1. How big is target market opportunity?
2. What market share do you plan to gain?
3. How long will that take?
4. Who is your best client?
5. How did you arrive at these values?
6. What is your PR strategy?
7. Who do you want to be like?
8. Your product is…
9. What is your uniqueness?
10. Why is now the best time for your product?
11. What is your marketing strategy?
12. Who is your main competitor?
13. In which countries do you plan to be present?
14. What sales channels do you plan to use?
The above questions are extremely important, but in the process of working with investors, this list will expand and give more and more insight into the project and the process from idea to implementation.
We recommend that you conduct your own research on possible questions from investors on the main blocks and prepare a question-answer document, which will greatly facilitate the interaction of founders with investors and the project community.
