Girish Mathrubootham is the Poster Child of VC funded Indian SaaS industry. He raised $400m from marque investors like Sequoia, Accel, Google and Tiger Global. SaaSBooMi, the Asian Saas meet for founders is, well, booming. This year it is slated for 24 & 25 Jan and yours truly will be there (thanks to Suresh Sambandam, CEO Kissflow).
As an advance pack, the organisers shared an audio message from Girish on how to prepare for VC’s. If you are looking at raising funds these are the earliest steps that you need to take. Here goes:
First, be prepared to educate the VC’s. They are very smart people but they do not necessarily know more than you about your target market.
It is also absolutely critical to Think Big.
You need to keep a short deck ready: 8-10 slides. Your story that you can elaborate in 20/30 mins just incase the VC is interested.
These are the 4 points you need to cover.
1. Market – How big is the Market?
2. CEO and team – VC’s are looking at you to assess “can this person scale himself to build a large company?” Do you have a well rounded team in place. Showcase the team.
3. Why should customers care about the product? Will they pay? If yes – how much? Demonstrate this through early traction.
4. There is some traction / customers. But do you have a GTM plan. How will you generate leads etc. A detailed and clear path articulation gives great value to your pitch.
These together signals to the VC – “Here is a great team, addressing a large market, Customers like them and are paying already, and they know how to scale”.
Be prepared.
Where I learnt this #386
