Rob Delman of Golden Seeds: Pitch Preparation Tips for Angels

[Guest post by Rob Delman, a professional angel investor and an active member of Golden Seeds in New York. He is proud to be nicknamed the “Golden Dude” by his female forum mates.]

As an angel investor, have you ever sat in a room listening to a pitch and have had no idea what the entrepreneur was talking about? Do your eyes glaze over while your hands reach for your BlackBerry?

So often, I find that entrepreneurs forget that angels are typically a little knowledgeable about a lot of things and very knowledgeable about nothing. If the entrepreneur is speaking “above” the audience but is still engaging, they may stand a chance of obtaining funding but it is doubtful considering the multitude of opportunities available for angel investment. It is easy of course to put all the blame on the entrepreneur but at the end of the day, we share some of the responsibility as well.

Lately, I have found a very effective way to combat this situation. It takes some effort but if you want to really give every pitch the full attention it deserves, it can be worth it. The vast majority of entrepreneurs submit their applications online via Angelsoft. This is a wonderful piece of software written by angels for angels.

Check with your angel group to get a schedule of presenting companies at your upcoming forum, log onto Angelsoft and see if the entrepreneur has uploaded a video or any other supporting documents. This is also a great time to review their application and do some very light due diligence of the people, product, competitors and industry.

We are all experts at using Google (although personally, I now prefer Bing) so now is the time to show off our skills. Take no more than 10 minutes to enter search keywords based on their application. Also review the company’s website and do a search for the founder/CEO. If you are going to hear 6 presentations, this will take no more than an hour which is time well spent if it enables you to engage proactively with the entrepreneur and ask probing, but appropriate questions during the Q&A part of the presentation.

Remember, it is the responsibility of both the entrepreneur and the angel to come prepared to the pitch!

VH: This is our last post until New Year. Happy Holidays to all venture igniters!

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