Directors like James Cameron, James L. Brooks, and Steven Spielberg are masters when it comes to understanding human emotion. In just a few short scenes, they can leave a whole audience in tears. They aren’t doing anything magical. They’re just appealing to the same human emotions we all have. As an Alchemist Accelerator Partner, I teach founders how to apply the same principles to fundraising. Get an investor emotionally excited and investment comes naturally. Try to beat them to death with numbers and figures, and you’ll just spin your wheels. Investors see thousands of pitches a year and fund a handful. If you want to win, you have to get them excited and snap them out of their default behavior of “no.”
Luckily for founders, investors are human too. So naturally, they have common emotional triggers that spark excitement, and ultimately, investment. In working with hundreds of founders, as well as raising $5.4million in seed funding for my own startup, I’ve identified eight emotional triggers nearly all investors respond to. By focusing on conveying these points to prospective investors, founders stand much better chances of raising capital and ultimately building great businesses.
The eight emotional triggers are:
Big Market
Investors live and die by their returns. The only way to get big returns is to invest in companies that have potential for big exits. For most investors, big market is a fairly binary measure: “Is the TAM (total addressable market) large enough to get me outsized returns on my investment?” they’ll be thinking. If the TAM is over $2B, you’ll get a check and if it’s less than $2B, they’ll likely have to pass — even if they really like you. So make sure you help your investors know exactly how big your market is by helping them do the math. If an investor is asking questions about how many customers are in your space or how big you think the market is, don’t make them guess at the answers. Give them all the data they need to help them understand the TAM. This is especially important if there’s a general perception your market may be too small.
Rapid Growth
The only thing that separates a startup from a small business is rapid growth. It’s literally the definition of a startup. The easiest way to demonstrate a rapidly growing company is to, of course, be growing rapidly, which typically means you’re adding users, customers, or revenue quickly. However, if you’re pre-revenue or pre-launch, growth projections can also help to convince an investor that your business is about to take off. If you’ve done the work in Excel to know you’re adopting the best business model, now is the time to use it to convince someone else.
Why Now?
The why now question is really a two-part question of movement. Why has this business never been possible until now? What has changed now to make this business possible for the first time? After all, fresh ideas are nearly impossible so chances are others have come before you and failed. You need to explain what has changed that will make your vision succeed. Market movement creates opportunity. You see it. They see it, but only you know how your business can best seize the opportunity to create billions more for the benefit of both of your organizations.
Unfair Advantages
Investors recognize there are lots of smart people in the world, so becoming a successful company in a crowded marketplace requires more than just efficient execution. Describe precisely how you’re creating a new earnings engine as well as any unfair advantages you may have. For example, if you have extreme domain knowledge around analyzing very large datasets or have worked in the industry you’re targeting with your new product (e.g., healthcare), you should highlight that in your pitch.
Founder Strength
Building any successful company is hard. Building a multi-billion dollar company is nearly impossibly hard. When investors invest in your business, they can’t just believe in your idea. They have to believe in YOU. The best way to convince them is to show them a history of exceptional achievements. For example, if you have a new security technology, are you already an inventor holding patents or do you have a CISSP? Name drop. Make connections to your market. Mention achievements and show off logos. Be sure to share all of your founding team strengths.
Founder Bond
Co-founder conflicts are among the top reasons startups fail. It’s not talked about every day on TechCrunch, but investors see it all the time in their portfolios. So when a potential investor asks, “How did you and your co-founder meet?” he or she actually doesn’t really care about your cute story of growing up together and your mutual admiration of Pokemon. What the investor really wants to know is if you and your co-founder are committed to each other enough to stick it out through the ups and the inevitable downs of startup life. Founders who have bonded because they’ve known each other awhile often have an edge because (presumably) their relationship has already weathered some turbulence.
Fear of Missing Out (FOMO)
In the public markets, investors pay big money for the privilege of investing in stocks at a future date, at a current known price. It’s called option trading and it’s a multi-billion dollar market in the U.S. alone. In the private market, investors get “free options” all day by telling founders simple things like “We’re still discussing things internally” or “We’re still working through diligence items.” As a founder, it’s your job to move these maybes to real answers. The best way to do this is by appealing to what we all fear, which is missing out on something that might be amazing.
Confidence
Investors are looking for founders with confidence. After all, if you aren’t confident in your own business, why should the investor be confident in your ability to make it successful? One of my fundraising mentors, Michael Carter, used to remind me, “It’s your job to be confident.” That haunted me during my own fundraising process, but it also provided a healthy reminder that confidence isn’t an emotion. It’s something you can project through tone, body language, and deliberate actions — even if deep down inside you feel anything but confident.
Emotion stays with us, making the discovery of the right human connection a significant factor in an evolving investment strategy. Talk. Uncover. Discover. Emotional triggers have the power to accelerate your funding success.
About Michia Rohrssen
Michia Rohrssen is the CEO of Prodigy, the fastest growing auto startup. He is also a founder/blogger at B2BFounder.com, providing actionable insights from a founder in the trenches. Before Prodigy, he served as Head of Growth at VentureBeat and CEO of Smarter Solutions. Learn more at https://getprodigy.com.
About the Alchemist Accelerator
Alchemist is a venture-backed initiative focused on accelerating the development of seed-stage ventures that monetize from enterprises (not consumers). The accelerator’s primary screening criteria is on teams, with primacy placed on having distinctive technical co-founders. We give companies around $36K, and run them through a structured 6-month program heavily focused on sales, customer development, and fundraising. Our backers include many of the top corporate and VC funds in the Valley — including Khosla Ventures, DFJ, Cisco, and Salesforce, among others. CB Insights has rated Alchemist the top program based on median funding rates of its grads (YC was #2), and Alchemist is perennially in the top of various Accelerator rankings. The accelerator seeds around 75 enterprise-monetizing ventures / year. Learn more about applying today.