Marksonland

A friend of mine recently asked me what needs to go into a deck for angel investors. Obviously, for friends and family rounds there's no formula. But for professional angel investors, here's what I would make sure I cover. Or, put it another way, if someone were pitching me for money, this is what I would focus on:

- team - who are you and why are you uniquely posed for success?

- basics on the product (functionality, idea, etc.)

- the development cycle (where are you, what do you need to do for 1.0, etc.)

- hiring plans (how many people do you need to hire to get to the next milestone? what areas?)

- what is the next milestone (another funding event? a launch? partnership/ sale? etc.)

- what does the $ raised buy with respect to those milestones? Are you going to be raising more? When?

- what are you spending the raised $ on? Office space? salaries? hardware? software? Marketing?

- if you are going to launch as an independent site, what's your traffic strategy? SEO? SEM? PR? Ads? How are going to execute that strategy?

- Revenue model? When does it kick in?

- Potential partners? Competitors?

- Valuation?

When you pitch an angel, often times you're really pitching "the team and the dream." But that doesn't mean that there are lots of other things people will ask you about - the lis above is my checklist.