It is always a grey area as to what do investors want to hear from Entrepreneurs, but more important than that is what do Investors Don't want to hear from budding entrepreneurs ? This is because the moment your pitch incudes any of these it drives away the investors attention from the pitch & they no longer are interested.
1) 'We have a $100 million valuation as we have a solid concept, a nice website / app and early users to justify our idea' : The main component of any pitch is valuation. Getting a 8-10X is a very low probability for any pitch. In case you have valued your startup at a higher end, Investors would want to verify first with similar comparable companies , that have been valued at such valuations . It also depends on which stage your startup is at. Hence having a concept, a cool web presence or early users is not enough.
2) 'There is nobody who solves this problem' : It is not possible that you solely exist to solve a particular identified problem. It may have other ways or options possible. Investors want the Entrepreneurs to be skeptic about this . They [ Investors] initially listen to the entrepreneur & consider everything before deciding to invest in the venture.
3) 'There is no competition' : This statement sounds very immature at first and inadequate in second place. This is because , everything has an alternative and every alternative solution is an option to solve the problem identified . Hence there is nothing like Zero Competition. Secondly it brings out the inadequate information / data you posses about the marketplace too. To put this in the other way, investors would love to hear the level of competition & how your startup solutions differ from those existing ones.
4) 'Just see how many Downloads we have & Freemium Users too ': It is always good to start with such metrics , but wait ! Investors want to see how long you sustain this excitement & how are you going to convert those metrics into financials . Yes, it's the number of subscribers to paid plans that would take you one step closer to funding , rather than just bragging about number of site visits or number of app downloads.
5)' We are Going to be Unicorns Soon ' : Every entrepreneur has a dream to be an Unicorn. No problem in that. But having a vision isn't enough. It needs to be backed by action too. Investors need to chalk out the plans in detail as to how your startup will reach the milestone & what problems you may face down the line. What are your Plan B's or C's in case you stumble ? What are your exit plans in case things don't work out as planned.
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