Dasha Kroshkina

As a second time founder who raised $5M and mentored 30 founders to successfully raise, I recommend focusing on 3 core parts if you are pre-seed stage (pre revenue and pre exciting traction). - Problem - How big is the market - Team At this stage it’s not about the solution. Even though as a founder it’s all you want to talk about ;) At early stage investors want to see a clear problem that has HUGE market (for many unicorns) and that you are the best team to solve it (domain expertise, market insights and execution). Because great team at a big enough market can pivot 100 times and still find a solution.

Also remember that investors spent on average less than 90 sec on your deck. Meaning 5-7 sec per slide. If you can’t read your own slide within 5 seconds - cut it. Use titles to communicate the core message from the slide. Ideally investors can get a clearly and catchy story just by reading titles of your slides.

As a second time founder who raised $5M , pitched to hundreds of investors and went through Techstars and Berkeley SkyDeck, I’ve learned that one thing about raising from angel investors. Pitch to those people who organically understand the problem you are solving. They have experienced it first hand or are top managers in companies in this space or founder of late stage startups in this space. Find those and emphasize in your pitch and deck on the problem (that’s the core thing that should be clear to EVERYONE) and about you (why you are the best team to solve this problem). And the rest is making them excited and finding this interpersonal magic.