How do you tell a story to an investor for the first time?

Let's be clear, this article is not to teach entrepreneurs how to cheat investors money. The latter method, if it works for you, it must be your project itself is a good project, you have to do the things you want to be very clear, just because you are a novice financing, bad words, do not know how to say their own projects, talk about a few down, the response is flat. I once hoped that once the friend who had been in the capital had imparted some financing skills, but the other party often came to a sentence: Do yourself well, do not trifles.

Isn't that funny? To be yourself is to be able to have countless opportunities to get to know you when you have long enough time with each other. But the investor looks at the project, just like a blind date, do you think that being yourself will allow you to fully understand you in one or two hours? Don't get dizzy with the chicken soup, the hands-on entrepreneur, if you don't know these skills, even have no chance. To be yourself, investors fall in love with your project at first sight, only to say that you are lucky. Take the initiative to do anything, never put your success in the hope of luck.

How to understand "storytelling"?

For the past three months, I've been going crazy about this thing. I believe that many entrepreneurs with no financing experience have the same experience: you know exactly where you are and what you want to do. To write a business plan, according to the information found on the Internet, the top ten elements of BP are written in.

If your project is privileged to be reported by the tech media, then there may be one months, and investors will come to you for an interview one after another. When you see the top three investors, you feel very happy, the king is willing to spend two hours listening to your project, although you do not speak, but still do your best to make things clear. But starting with the fourth investor, you quickly realize that it's a waste of time because you don't know what to say.

Unfortunately, you do not know what to say, not because you have nothing to say, but the highlight of your project is too much. In the beginning, you'll pick the one you think you think is the most shiny, but when you find that someone else is not interested, you have to change it until you get dizzy.

To figure out where the problem is, you find the same friends in the Internet industry who say the project. Then you get a lot of investors embarrassed to say that only friends will confide in the opinion:

"I don't think you're being attractive enough."

"I don't think you have any idea."

"You haven't convinced me that this is a money-making."

These ideas, though full of sincerity, are difficult to help you. In addition, your friends will give you a variety of suggestions for change. What makes you so nervous is that you're holding a version that you've been advised to change with so many people, to talk to a new person, he listened to, or very seriously to tell you: I think you did not make it clear, you do not have a lot of friends in the business, let them give you some advice.

I believe you have a very clear idea of your project, and it is because you think very clearly that it often leads you to not know how to express it, because you are not the same as the standard for "make the Project Clear" (Your standards are too high).

Perhaps you and I have participated in a lot of sharing will, when you see others talking about their projects, the eloquent, in the mind, this man can really kan. Then a stubborn thought flashed past, so that can be said, do not do things. There was a time when everyone was telling the story so that some of the founders would spit: the ones who got the investment were crosstalk performers.
At first, I also very disgusted with "tell the story" These three words, because these three words give the person with the sense of speculation, as a hands-on entrepreneur, you are very difficult not to think: entrepreneurship on Entrepreneurship, tell what story.

It was not until last week that I realized how to understand the "storytelling" correctly.

Originally, my idea is that I have to prove to the investors that their project is promising, so I put all the evidence out, into the business plan of ten elements, like a film director, all reluctant to put all the footage into the film. This is not the way to render. You have to be clear that your first priority is not to prove to investors how good your project is.

Business plan, first of all, is a plan, the so-called "storytelling", is to describe your plan, rather than the list of all the evidence. If you also know how to find the answer, read the essence of the answer, you have a great opportunity to go to me the wrong way. I am not saying that these answers are not right, but they are not for beginners. But for those who already know how to write a business plan, hoping to make it more perfect. Without a little knowledge of venture capital, you're like a rookie breaking into an advanced class and painting changes in a frame that someone else has set up.

Business plan, Lecture notes and PPT

First, take out your original business plan, which is covered with evidence. Take all the evidence in it and pick it up, and get a sense of the logical relationship between evidence and evidence. You pick up the evidence that can be strung together in a logical relationship and put the ones that don't have a logical relationship first. When you understand the logical relationship, you are a "storyteller":

Don't allow yourself to be limited to other people's set up story templates, the narrative structure set up on the Internet is not necessarily suitable for your project, if you follow the template to do 1:1, it will only make your plans become logical confusion. You can first say how big the market is, you can also first say that the solution to the pain point, or you can first say what you are doing, it is not important. It is important to make your plan clear.

It would be best if the plan were to string up the top ten elements in the order that you think they were reasonable, and if there were one or two elements that were not connected, you could say the last.

There are some elements that can be linked because of their own logical relationship, I believe that everyone in school have done similar homework: a number of independent sentences in a logical connection. The structure of the narrative is similar: because A, so B, although B, or C, so d.

But there are some elements that are not logically related, and then you need to connect them with one or two transitional sentences or events. For example, E and F are not related to the ten elements of your business plan, you can put them in the story outline and make them transforms: A causes E,e to lead to B, with B and F, so there are C and D.

It doesn't matter what you say after you're a beginner, as long as they are logically related as a whole. The logic of narration is the so-called "storytelling".

Next, how to become "storytelling" master? You are not just content with telling the story, but you should consider the psychology of the person listening to the story. Like a film director, to express the same theme, but your narrative is not good, your story is clear, but the audience do not like to see. For investors, what your business is, what your users are, are not as important as the market to make money, and before you talk to them about all the things that have changed the world, they want you to first talk about what the market is worth doing. The reason they want to hear you say the story behind you is because you made him convinced at the beginning that you could make money in this line.

Why didn't my business plan work? I thought about it because I spent a lot of time in describing what I was doing and how I made the money. For investors, how to make money is second, and more importantly, you have to tell him this matter can make money. It is not because of how hard you work, but because the market environment allows you to make money, so the market environment can make money is what you have to tell them in the first place. Note：

What you want to say is not "market" itself, but "market can make money". At this time to introduce the industry's history, vision and so on, is meaningless.

So, the story frame that we see Daniel gives is basically such a beginning. It's just that if you start with a framework like this, it will be very difficult. But it will be much easier to adjust the order of presentation after you have sorted out the logic of everything. When your framework is organized, see if you are missing ten elements, and if not, your job is half done.

After finishing the story outline, don't worry about writing PPT first. Write down your speech first. The speech is what you will say when you press the outline and tell the story to others. It's okay to write something colloquial and write down all the data you think is critical. Why did you write that down? This is to prevent you from working out when you are speaking ppt. Suppose you give the investor PPT, total time has 30 minutes, your speed is slow again, you can say 150~200 word every minute, so you need to write 4500~6000 word.

I think it's hard for most people to write 3000 words. One thing, you said maybe half an hour to say not clear, but by writing, within 6000 words must be able to write down completely. Because when you say, your ideas are divergent, and investors in the middle of your talk will interrupt you, often run away. But if you have a script, then you are not too easy to get too far, because you will not forget where you are speaking, so you can grasp the time.

When you have written the script, first to tell the friends several times, if they are good feedback, you can send to the designer, to tell the designer again, if he understood, let him again put the key data and points out, do a version of the beautiful ppt to you. You will be able to reap what you want by taking your PowerPoint and lecture notes to others.

Now, is ppt,ppt important?

Of course you do. But why did some of the investment Daniel tell you this is not important? Because these superficial things are really unimportant to them, they are already at the decision-making level. But you know, your PPT is to go over those who look at more than 300 projects a year to see the investment managers, they feel that your project can talk, will talk to you, the latter can be.

How do PowerPoint catch the eye of an investment manager without a design? How can you design a product if you don't have a good ppt?

If you don't do it yourself, they will take the time to organize your ppt, unless they especially want to push you. Do you feel like someone else is so busy? At this point, I have suffered a great loss. Looking back, my ppt in July was a piece of crap, and if it wasn't for the 36Kr, I think it would be hard to give any feedback on my own business plan.

If you finish, suddenly found some bright spots did not say what to do?

As I said, the evidence that has nothing to do with the logic of the whole story is put aside first. How do you use these materials? Don't worry, there is no question link. When you design the logic of the story, the first to bury the problem, guide the people to listen to the story, is the best way, if it is not, there is no relationship, you can wait until the story is finished, set up a common question and answer link, ask yourself.

Investor tricks

I'm sure there will be some entrepreneurs who, like me, are not reacting very quickly. And some of the investments like to put pressure on entrepreneurs to test your commitment to start a business. The reason they want to test you is because they do not know you, perhaps you have invested a lot of time and money for this matter, but the other party does not know. Because now there are too many "fake entrepreneurs" exist.

I don't know what happens when you're in this situation, I'm always embarrassed. There sits a man older than you, and you respect him. When he deliberately asks stupid questions to challenge you, it feels a bit like this: your grandmother asked you who you saved if she and your mom were in the water at the same time. If you are a peer, you may have two-way with him, but in the face of seniors, especially when you want him to give you some pointers, you are tongue-tied. At first, when I met this situation, I was envious of the four-way crosstalk actor's humor, there is always a kind of ambition difficult to express helplessness.

I came up with a method (I haven't had a chance to try) and maybe you could try it. If you find that the other person's tone is determined to challenge you and interrupt you frequently, you openly told him at the first time that the stress test was no use to me, that I had thought very clearly about what I was going to do, but I was not good at talking, and I hope you don't challenge me in order to make the project clear.

There is some help in being gifted, but if there is no such talent, then you can work in other directions.

Finally, I recommend to you Du Feng's "Qiantu", this book has helped me a lot. This is a book for entrepreneurs to see the venture capital, this book will be the entire venture capital system written very clearly. Help entrepreneurs know more about how to finance.

In addition, in the actual project, you worry about their eloquence, there are two books are produced by our company, but also recommended entrepreneurs to read: "Blurted out, wit," "Magic public speech." Author Andrie Saidniev is an entrepreneur, is very good at speech, he will share his experience in a book, may let everyone have some harvest.