Preparing for your first investor meeting
What investors actually ask, which numbers to know by heart, and how to structure a 20-minute pitch.
Know your numbers cold
Revenue (monthly and yearly), growth rate, gross margin, customer acquisition cost, retention and monthly burn. If you are pre-revenue, know your validation numbers: sign-ups, pilots, waitlist, letters of intent.
A simple pitch structure
Problem, solution, why now, market size, traction, business model, competition, team, the ask and how you will use the money. Ten to twelve slides is plenty.
Be specific about the ask
State how much you are raising, what it buys (for example, 18 months of runway to reach a specific revenue), and the type of instrument: equity, convertible note or debt.
Expect the hard questions
Why will you win? What happens if a big competitor copies you? What is the biggest risk? Honest, thought-through answers build more trust than polished slides.
Follow up properly
Send a short thank-you email within 24 hours with your deck and any data they asked for. Then send a monthly update. Investors often invest in lines, not dots.
Need help putting this into practice?
Our team can help with software, AI agents, talent or capital introductions.
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