Artiman Ventures reviews the Perfect Pitch or Strike out - Akhil Saklecha

1
The Perfect Pitchor strikeout

• Akhil Saklecha

Artiman Ventures
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Artiman Investors Entrepreneurs
U.S. Investment Team Amit Shah Yatin
Mundkur Tom Dennedy Akhil Saklecha Ajit
Singh Tim Wilson

• Venture Investing Experience
• Collectively managing 900M invested in 140
  seed/earlystage companies
• 88 exits with aggregate realized return of 3.3x
• 11 IPOs and 32 acquisitions
• Entrepreneurial Experience
• Co-founded 10 startups in the U.S. and India
• 6 successful exits with aggregate value of gt 1
  Billion
• ZeitNet, PipeLinks, Equator, Daksh, Ross,
  Kaleida, Clarity, Airgo, BioImagene
• Operating Experience - public and private
• Cisco, Rockwell, Siemens, AMD, ATT, Lucent,
  Cabletron, Digital Island, FireEye, Airgo,
  Clarity Wireless, Adaptive, Compaq, Qualcomm, HP
• Technology Background
• Played pioneering roles in seminal industries
  Server Computing, Networking, Voice over IP,
  IPTV, Digital Consumer Electronics
• 26 US patents

India Team M. J. Aravind Ramesh Radhakrishnan
US Operations Team Ida Ng
EIR Frank Thibodeau Adam De La Zerda Mahmood
Panjwani Atul Sharan Rob Levy
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Shop talk

• VCs are shallow people
• KISS
• Start at the beginning and top-down
• Dont get sucked into arguments that arent
  pertinent to the company
• Financials at 3 years arent 10M
• Dont try and create competition
• Dont bluff. We all talk to each other.
• White board

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Be prepared

• Know your data, market, customers
• Bring your own dongle
• Expect your demo to fail
• How much time do you have?
• Youve got less than 30 minutes

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12 Slide Rule

• Exec Summary
• The Problem
• Market
• The Solution
• Business Model
• Technology

• IP/Regulatory
• Competition
• Team
• Financials
• Capital needs
• Exec Summary

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The Breakdown

• Exec summary
• Begin and end with it
• It should tell the story
• Current status of the company
• Broad strokes
• Dont let questions distract you

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The lion and the mouse

• The Problem
• Go big or go home
• Needs to touch a lot of people
• Market
• Top Down
• Bottoms Up
• Is it growing?
• Who and where are the customers?

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Bigger is better

• The Solution
• Must Have, Deadly Sins
• Disruptive
• Makes sense
• Can you do it?
• Business Model
• How do you make money? Breakeven?
• Do you understand sales marketing?

9
Dogs pee to mark their turf. What do you do?

• IP
• Patents are like gold
• But is it fundamental?
• Crowded areas need FTO
• Regulatory
• What is needed here?
• Its all about time and money

10
Find the white space

• Competition
• Know them well
• Your uniqueness needs to be very clear
• Threes a crowd
• Team
• If you had great exits - move to slide 1
• Brands and experience
• Domain knowledge and depth
• More than 50 of the equation

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Show me the money

• Financials
• Bottoms up creation
• Does it scale?
• VCs love haircuts
• So whats the Ask?
• Whats been raised? Any skin in the game?
• What are you going to do with it?
• Is it realistic?

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Wrap it up

• Exec summary
• End where you began
• Concluding remarks
• How do you get to 1B revenue
• Summarize thoughts and concerns
• What info can you send?
• Who are the experts that you can connect?
• When is the expected follow-up?