How to improve your chances of attracting early-stage investing

Miruna says: “Before approaching investors, any founder should spend some time crafting their story and making sure they are ready to articulate their strengths and present the work they have done so far in a compelling way. There is a lot of value in that initial preparation and it is one of the best things you can do to improve your chances of attracting early stage investing.”

Miruna says: “One of the challenges businesses face early on is they don’t have enough data to extrapolate from. That means it can be hard to show investors that what they are doing is working and can scale beyond that. However if you don’t have enough quantitative data, use qualitative data to paint a picture of how the potential might be realised. The key areas that investors want to know about are team, market and product. For the team, for example, it is important that founders are able to articulate their team’s experience, expertise and track record – what have been some of the more ambitious things they have achieved so far, what insights they have been able to develop over time and how those are relevant to what they are building now.”

Miruna says: “Immerse yourself in your chosen market and try to validate that opportunity as much as possible by speaking to customers and really understanding their needs. You need to show that you really understand the market you are going after. Think about the overall potential of the opportunity – how big is the total market – and be able to provide data that shows how much customers are spending in the market at the moment and how much of that you think you could capture.”

Miruna says: “Be very clear what your core product is. Identify the product features that matter most to your customers and then see how these compare to other options available to your customers. Inexperienced founders sometimes just have a long list of things they can do but they don’t really narrow it down to the thing that customers care most about and why this is
better than the alternatives.”

Miruna says: “The goal here is to enhance the credibility of the team. Investors will look for complementary skills and compatibility amongst team members. If for example the team has successfully worked together for a while, this may indicate that they are in a good position to handle future potential disagreements. You should also have an understanding of what gaps there are in the team and what hires you would make to fill those gaps and grow the business, once there is more capital.”

Miruna says: “Tell investors about specific customers who already love your product and share feedback from them explaining the benefits to them of using it – perhaps your product saves them time, or money, or opens up new opportunities for them. Ideally provide some data to show how it does that. If you have gone to investors before you have a functioning product,
share with them the ways in which you have validated your assumptions about your product or service and why you
think it is going to resonate with customers. There are investors who are happy to back credible teams which don’t yet have a functioning product.”

Miruna says: “You need to explain to potential investors why is now a good time for your business to grow. Investors see a lot of businesses and they are likely to be familiar with businesses who were doing pretty much the same thing as your business is, but ultimately failed to scale. So do some research to understand what other businesses were operating in this space and how well they were doing – and if they didn’t do well, why and how you will do it differently, perhaps because the market conditions have changed.”