Tim Cooley > Quotes

“This may come as a shock, but the goal of every pitch is not to get funded. The actual goal of any pitch is to move to the next round of conversation.”
― Tim Cooley, The Pitch Deck Book: How To Present Your Business And Secure Investors

“Every time you transition from one slide section to another, treat this as though there is another implied question which you will “gladly” answer.”
― Tim Cooley, The Pitch Deck Book: How To Present Your Business And Secure Investors

“The way you present should resemble a casual conversation.”
― Tim Cooley, The Pitch Deck Book: How To Present Your Business And Secure Investors

“At this point, you have set the stage for what the business is. The investors know how you arrived at the problem. They know your solution to the problem and now they know how you make money. Now it is time to show off your projected future. By answering a forecasting question, “What does your business look like over the next five years?”
― Tim Cooley, The Pitch Deck Book: How To Present Your Business And Secure Investors

“Ask for money, receive advice. Ask for advice, receive money.” This holds true in fundraising all the time! You are looking for your Champion, the member of the group who knows a lot about your industry and will vouch for you and the business. Investors like helping entrepreneurs, so once you have that Champion, they will most likely advocate for you. Not only that, but they may also make introductions to other investors outside the group.”
― Tim Cooley, The Pitch Deck Book: How To Present Your Business And Secure Investors

“There are a lot of ways to present this information, but the best way is to use a check box chart system, as pictured above. When putting together one of these charts, your first few features should be the ones you discussed in the problem/solution slides. The whole reason you are building this business is to solve those pain points. On this slide, you are also reminding the investors of what you are doing. It has been a while and they may have forgotten.”
― Tim Cooley, The Pitch Deck Book: How To Present Your Business And Secure Investors

“The best place to create a One Pager is at onepager.timlcooley.com.”
― Tim Cooley, The Pitch Deck Book: How To Present Your Business And Secure Investors

“The SAM is a smaller, targeted group within the TAM. Using the previous example, while there may be 2 Million people looking to pitch for any type of funding, we are not interested in those looking for auto or personal loans. We are exclusively looking for investment funding. This could reduce the 2 Million to 500,000 people.”
― Tim Cooley, The Pitch Deck Book: How To Present Your Business And Secure Investors

“The SOM is even smaller and represents the number of people you will sell to first. To find this number, ask yourself this question, “If I had to pick up the phone right now, who is the one person/business I would call?” This hyper-focus builds the obtainable market you are going after. Out of the 500,000 people looking for investment dollars, we are only going after first-time entrepreneurs with new business ideas. This number is reduced to about 50,000.”
― Tim Cooley, The Pitch Deck Book: How To Present Your Business And Secure Investors

“You need to show your solution. There are several ways to do this. If you have an application, show screenshots. If it is a service, show pictures of you performing it. If you are early in developing the idea, mock it up. Show wireframes of the application or sketches of the product. Mention the resolutions to the pain points you mentioned in your Problem Slide(s).”
― Tim Cooley, The Pitch Deck Book: How To Present Your Business And Secure Investors

“The Pitch is what gets investors interested enough to say, “I want to hear more.”
― Tim Cooley, The Pitch Deck Book: How To Present Your Business And Secure Investors

“Start by asking an implied question and then answer it.”
― Tim Cooley, The Pitch Deck Book: How To Present Your Business And Secure Investors

“You can see by comparing the numbers you get a percentage, in this case, 3%. This is good! This feels reasonable. There is no perfect ratio, but it feels good. The gut check says, “Yeah, this could happen.”
― Tim Cooley, The Pitch Deck Book: How To Present Your Business And Secure Investors

“investor money is expensive. Investing becomes much more complicated as the money you ask for rises.”
― Tim Cooley, The Pitch Deck Book: How To Present Your Business And Secure Investors

“Like your elevator pitch, you need a one-paragraph description of the business. The paragraph contains no more than four sentences explaining the problem, solution, and a few highlights about the business. The paragraph is a great tool to initiate a conversation or use as a follow-up when an investor asks for a brief description of the company. If using the paragraph to initiate a conversation, you can link to the One Pager to give more context about the investment.”
― Tim Cooley, The Pitch Deck Book: How To Present Your Business And Secure Investors

“What got my friends' companies funded was how they presented the company.”
― Tim Cooley, The Pitch Deck Book: How To Present Your Business And Secure Investors

“In our example, think about ways to demonstrate each problem. What data or imagery could you show?”
― Tim Cooley, The Pitch Deck Book: How To Present Your Business And Secure Investors

“Letters of Intent or purchase agreements can signify there is market potential.”
― Tim Cooley, The Pitch Deck Book: How To Present Your Business And Secure Investors

“The GOAL of the pitch deck content is to convey the 5 T’s that pique an investor’s interest. The 5 T’s are Team, Tactical Advantage, Total Addressable Market, Traction to Date, and Terms of the Deal.”
― Tim Cooley, The Pitch Deck Book: How To Present Your Business And Secure Investors

“The One Pager is a one-page document summarizing the entire company into simple consumable bite-sized pieces.”
― Tim Cooley, The Pitch Deck Book: How To Present Your Business And Secure Investors

“It is not uncommon for prospective businesses to complete 100 presentations before they find an investor.”
― Tim Cooley, The Pitch Deck Book: How To Present Your Business And Secure Investors

“The easiest way to find the experts is to ask. Almost every Angel Group has a point of contact who knows most members and their backgrounds. Usually, this is the Deal Flow Manager, Executive Director or one of the founders of the group. Reach out to one of these people and ask for advice about your pitch, one-pager or something else completely. “Hi, I am in the process of fundraising. We are a SaaS company in the ed-tech space. I was curious if I could ask you a few questions about…”
― Tim Cooley, The Pitch Deck Book: How To Present Your Business And Secure Investors

“The TAM is the largest number you can come up with for all the use cases of your product. For example, this book could be sold to anyone putting together a pitch deck. For this number, we would include anyone looking for investments. The TAM could be 2 million people a year.”
― Tim Cooley, The Pitch Deck Book: How To Present Your Business And Secure Investors

“Keep the topic high level by not diving deep into the details of the business or technology.”
― Tim Cooley, The Pitch Deck Book: How To Present Your Business And Secure Investors

“Here is an even briefer presentation statement; one sentence. Be prepared to explain your business in one line, less than 12 words. This one sentence can make or break interest in your business. It may take 100s of iterations to get it right. Once you nail this One Liner, it will be so easy to get people to take interest in your idea/business and allow you to set up that next meeting.”
― Tim Cooley, The Pitch Deck Book: How To Present Your Business And Secure Investors

“Sometimes the business is still figuring out what its pricing model should be, and if that is the case for you, mention it. If you do not know, do not keep it a secret. It is simple to say, “We have three models we are testing, and they look like this.”
― Tim Cooley, The Pitch Deck Book: How To Present Your Business And Secure Investors

“The goal of the investor is to get a return on their money invested, more specifically, they want to get at least ten times their return on the investment in your company.”
― Tim Cooley, The Pitch Deck Book: How To Present Your Business And Secure Investors

“You want the team slide early in the pitch when the team is your strongest point (for example, a Nobel-winning researcher as your chief scientist, or the former CTO of Facebook as your CEO).”
― Tim Cooley, The Pitch Deck Book: How To Present Your Business And Secure Investors

“When developing your problem slide, you need to convey critical points of "pain" investors will understand. You will use these points of pain to help convey how many people have these issues, the cost (emotional, financial, physical, or intangible) associated to the pain and there are people who want the pain to stop.”
― Tim Cooley, The Pitch Deck Book: How To Present Your Business And Secure Investors

“Investors need to see and feel the problem.”
― Tim Cooley, The Pitch Deck Book: How To Present Your Business And Secure Investors