Pitching 101 with Invisiplug

We got to hear Bryan O'Connell (who is one of the founders of Invisiplug in a class session) on how to Pitch to an investor. 

Bryan and Invisiplug's other co-founder, Michael Barzman, were in an episode of Sharktank & Lori Greiner ended up investing in it.

Thanks to this session - I ended up watching my first ever episode of SharkTank which later turned into binge watching!

Watching Bryan talk about his experience on Shark Tank gave me my first insights on how Reality TV worked from the perspective of a participant. I was surprised to know that their pitch took well over two hours to film - although, you only see five minutes of it or so on the episode.  (WOW) That's a lot of editing!

I learnt that the most successful pitches are the ones that are clear, concise and simple. The pitches that ended up winning the investor's confidence were the ones that:  

(1) Had a simple product that fulfilled a basic consumer need, made an ordinary task more convenient or in this case an ordinary item more aesthetically pleasing

(2) Had a clear executional idea (looked more favorably upon if they had already begun executing the idea and the product was yielding returns/results)

(3) Had a clear understanding of the funds that are required to get the business growing and profitable and the estimated allocation of the funds

Invisiplug was successful raising capital as they had a simple product and had already started executing their ideas - through partnering with Costco etc and had a clear idea on how to grow their business.

Also learnt from watching this episode and other episodes of Shark Tank : Have a tangible product sample (assuming you are not trying to sell a service) to show/demonstrate to your investors. 

I found this session very helpful in light of the pitch we are about to have at Dollar Shave Club in a few weeks & gave me several insights into what a pitch was and how to pull it off effectively in order to achieve the desired outcome (funding).