Hi Aaron - your pitch deck has become *the* deck for startups to emulate - I was wondering if you could go back and change anything on the deck or add anything, would you? What advice do you have for someone currently trying to raise?

If you’re looking to raise money, you need to show three things: 1. You solve a real problem, and therefore have a real business. Creating a company that say, helps manage Twitter lists better, is a feature, not a business. You’d be surprised how many people have features, and not real businesses. Think long and hard about your own business here. 2. Prove you have a big market. I’ve been pitched many, many times on businesses where if you do back of the envelope math there are only say 100,000 potential customers worth maybe $100 / year = $10m / year = too small. It might be a good lifestyle business, but will not attract investors. 3. Have a sustainable advantage. That’s either tech that’s hard to replicate, or patents, or an experienced leadership team. If you have none of the above, you’re hosed.

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If you could go back and start over again, what would you do differently?

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Almost every space is crowded with competition, whether you realize it or not. If the competitors are all early startups I don't necessarily consider them competition becau... (more)

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