thederekjohnson.com

I just got an email from another young entrepreneur and he asked a good question that I wanted to answer on my blog. His question was a pretty broad one, but it related to how best to pitch to an Angel Investment Group. First off, let me start by explaining what an Angel Investment Group is. Usually these groups, from my experience, are 15-75 members, they meet every month or two and consist of “qualified” investors that listen to 3-5 investment pitches every meeting. These groups on occasion also hold events to educate both investors and entrepreneurs on issues relating to investment capital.

So before I jump right into my advice on pitching to Angel Groups, let me shed some light onto the process of how you get to that point. The first step is the application process. Sometimes there is an application fee of $80 - $150, and from my experience, most Angel Groups are using an online website http://www.angelsoft.net to accept their applications. This website is a great tool for the entrepreneur as you can upload all your documents, create a quick video pitch and even auto populate other Angel Group applications with the information and documents from past applications. Depending on the group size and the meeting frequency, the group will evaluate the applications and select 5-8 companies to present to the investment screening committee. During the screening process, the company presents a powerpoint presentation to a small portion of the group’s members, and finishes off with a Q&A session and time for the members to give you feedback and advice. Then the screening committee will select 3-4 companies to present to the entire membership with a Q&A portion, which sometimes can come with presentation fees up to $1,500.

In this blog post I’m not going to go into how to structure the slides in your presentations, there is already enough good information out there on this, that I would just be repeating what has already been said. I have found that the Seattle Alliance of Angels have the best instructional guide to structuring your powerpoint presentation. You can download the guide they have created here.

Below I am going to focus on the stuff that I wish I would have know when I started pitching to Angel Groups, as I think some of these things can make or break an investment pitch. In addition to giving you my thoughts, I also asked Eric Pratum, a past applicant screener and part of the screening committee for the Bellingham Angel Group to give his thoughts, which are below mine and in blue italic font.

Get Connected - Before you apply to an Angel Group, make sure someone on the screening committee knows you. These Angel Groups get hundreds of investment applications and you need to make sure you have someone on the inside that is batting for you when the members are Read More →

If you own a company, you should know everything about the companies that you consider competition. I’m always surprised when I talk to our competition and they have no clue what we are up to (especially as we are such an open book at our company). There is no excuse for not monitoring your competition, especially with all the tools available on the web.

Here are 6 things you should be doing to keep on top of what your competition is doing.

1) Subscribe To Their Blogs: This is pretty obvious, but whenever your competition posts to their blog, you should be the first one to read it. Usually company blogs contain information regarding new features, partnership launches, hires and give you insight into their culture. In addition, read the comments and see what their users’ reactions are to what is being posted.

2) Use Their Products: You should have an account set up on each of your competitors’ websites and every couple weeks poke around. A lot of your competitors will soft launch their new features weeks before they will ever release them to the press. If you are using their website, you will know about their feature launches way before they are announced. On a side note, make sure you subscribe in your account settings on their sites to their email newsletter and communications.

3) Look At Their Pictures: Most companies have pictures posted on MySpace, Facebook or Flikr. You wouldn’t believe how much you can learn from really looking at these pictures. From my experience, I’ve figured out how many employees our competitors have, what they are planning for the future, the computers they are running, even what their culture is like within their office. One of our competitors even posted a picture of a whiteboard within their office, which had a list of to do items. You wouldn’t believe the amount of stuff we learned from that one picture. Read More →

I just received an email from someone inquiring about a partnership with my company, Tatango.com and I had to get a blog post up to air my frustration at what I saw. There is definitely a lot to learn about how best to structure a first email, but to make this quick, there is one simple thing that is inexcusable for you not to have. A GOOD SIGNATURE!!!

I get tons of emails everyday, and nothing bugs me more then just a name at the end. Usually in that first email the bases are covered, such as what company you represent, what your company does, the value proposition, etc. but most people don’t take time to tell me who they are as a person (sometimes with unisex names, I can’t even tell if I’m talking to a guy or girl). Connecting personally with a business partner is so important nowadays, and I find you can do this very simply with a good signature. My signature is below, and I think it’s pretty good at telling you who I am as a person.

Derek Johnson
Founder and CEO, www.tatango.com
206.334.4012

Friend me on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/addfriend.php?id=37521058
Read my blog: http://www.thederekjohnson.com/
Follow me on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/tatango

Make sure that when you email me, you have all your basic contact info, and at least one of the following that lets me know a little about who you are as a person. If you don’t have at least one of these things, please don’t email me, I don’t do business with people I don’t know.

• Blog URL
• Recent press about your company
• Facebook, Twitter, MySpace profile URL
• School you attend (this is good if you don’t work for a company yet)

I know it’s a little late but something came to mind and I wanted to share it with everyone. Any other good examples of companies that have taken awhile to perfect their first offering before moving onto their second?

Thanks for all of the votes and great business tips, I have selected the winner of my iPod Nano, check out the video below to see who took it home!

Melanie Upchurch’s winning business tip: To secure some excellent employee relations, try letting them have a say in new hires for the company. (Kind of a recruitment process) Have applicants spend a day on the floor with employees, being trained, whatever it may be, and then have your current employees voice their opinion to upper level management. This way current employees have a greater since of loyalty and respect for the company because they know what kind of people you will be hiring in the future, and they feel as though they are contributing to the future of the company…they may be more likely to stick around. Bad mouthing and catty things should not be an issue because a. the employees don’t have the final say and b. they are most likely quality employees that you respect. Hope this helps at least a little with what you were looking for.

I’ve noted some honorable mentions below as well. Again, great tips everyone, I really appreciate the contribution to the post.

Ashley K. Edwards: Mine is simple: have a passion for what you’re selling (product, service, etc.). Your passion will shine through, and people will eat-it-up. PASSION!

Brandon Carroll: First, people want relationships, not a salespitch. People “buy” from friends - not from marketers. Patience is key, especially when trying to drive traffic. At first, traffic might not be that great, but if you wait, build rapport and relationships, you’ll establish value…

Mike Hackmer: The best business tip is to hire well and trust your people to do their jobs. I think if you build a team of smart people, men and women who are good at their jobs and work well together, and possess the right balance of integrity and camaraderie, you will have a loyal workforce that sticks together and works as a team to make your business, their business…

I encourage you all to check out the rest of the business tips as well. There is some great content to take away from each, check out the tips here.