What are the common mistakes you see startups make when pitching investors?

Don’t exaggerate. It won’t help you. Be honest about what you are building, how big it might be, how hard it is, etc. You won’t likely dupe a VC into believing that your business is bigger than it is or your team has more experience than they really do. So give it to them straight. VCs will give teams that tell the truth a ton of credit for doing so.

Founders who are talking

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What are the big mistakes you see founders make when pitching investors?

Answered by Eric Ries – Founder of the Lean Startup methodology. Posted in Money Sales Lessons

Answering the wrong question. For example, I once saw a team pitching all of the benefits of intelligent robots, including slides from the Jetsons, Transformers, etc. But t... (more)

What are the big mistakes you see entrepreneurs make when they come in to pitch?

Answered by David Unsworth – Investor.

1) They take 6 slides and $) mins until they get the message out about what problem they solve and why an investor should care. 2) Try to answer questions that they don't k... (more)

What are the biggest mistakes you see startups make with their websites?

Answered by Hiten Shah – Founder, KISSmetrics Posted in Lessons

Not iterating and a/b testing, not realizing how important copy writing is and not thinking about conversions. No matter how well you are converting visitors into customers... (more)

What are the biggest mistakes you see companies make online?

Answered by Mitch Joel – Founder, TwistImage

They go straight to the tactics and don't spend any time figuring out the strategy based on real business objectives and goals. If it doesn't add to the economic value of t... (more)

Whats the most common mistake you see entrepreneurs make?

Answered by Dan Martell – Founder & Investor. Posted in Operations

Buy an office dog. (kidding) In reality, there's a few things I see them do. - Don't measure the amount of time they have left. (i.e. run out of time and/or money) - They... (more)

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