How do you get investors and stakeholders interested in your startup idea?

What matters to me is two things & two things only? 1. Is the product/service a "Need" or a"Want". That can easily be found out by actually sampling / testing the product . services in a small market beyond your cheerleaders. I often do this myself at small / no cost for startups where i have initial interest. I don't invest in "wants" 2. Can the product actually sold profitably/has enough margin. Most startups again initially show great traction with predatory pricing and high ad spend but will it ever sell profitably? For eg in most D2C brands a max of 30% of COGS is needed else it will never make money!

Using design thinking for idea validation is a strategic approach that centers around empathy, creativity, and iteration. By empathizing with your target audience, defining clear problems, brainstorming creative solutions, prototyping and testing rigorously, iterating continuously, and validating persistently, you can refine your ideas to meet genuine user needs. This human-centered process helps build innovative and user-centric solutions, making them more attractive to stakeholders and investors. When presenting your validated idea, emphasize storytelling, user-centered data, prototypes, problem-solution fit, iterative strength, business models, market opportunity, traction, financial projections, and networking.

I have seen some of the most successful start-ups doing this by trying to simplify the problem statement as much as possible and to attack the problem as granularly as possible. For example, I have advised a start-up that was keen on solving the issue of gaining speed for signing or authenticating documents, they kept their problem statement quite simple, and did a deep dive into the regulatory and legal challenges in the current market for signing/authenticating documents which caused delays. They then built a platform to provide this as a service. The Founding team was able to gain amazing traction because they reverse engineered the problem statement and the referrals to use their service scaled like no other.

Choose one thing and garner people's interest. See, if they are ready to pay for it. There are multiple ways - 1) Build a landing page - and ask people to subscribe to know when you launch. 2) Ask people to pre-pay for a service/reward you will give later. See how they respond. 3) Add your project to a crowdfunding platform if it is relevant - it gets you the validation 4) Survey/Interview your target audience to understand their problem, and how they are solving it currently. If after multiple efforts, with your proposed audience, if you haven't generated any enquiries, it might be that you need to build a better solution. Your solution should be - 1) a solution 2) Better usability than current solution 3) More affordable

By effectively addressing these strategies, you can capture the interest and support of investors and stakeholders, increasing the likelihood of securing the resources and partnerships needed to bring your startup idea to fruition

Most start-ups have a huge gap between idea and communicating that idea to their investors. Because start-ups are founded by innovators who may not be the best marketing team, they suffer a setback in terms of how to craft a compelling narrative around the product. One of the best things that a start-up founder can do before they pitch to any investor, is to have one-on-ones with trusted mentors, advisors and industry veterans who can help the start-up craft its story better. Peer review is one of the most underrated resources and one that is often ignored by budding start-up founders.

They key point is to reach to investors with MVP version of the product to showcase that your idea can be implemented. With right set of skills MVP version of the product can be developed in few months or a week

Stories are the best. Everyone is doing something, a why matters the most. Because, it would be the why that will keep you going as a founder, even in the toughest times. So, build a solid why that will resonate with others, including investors.

Identify the right investors - 1) Stage they invest in 2) Sectors they invest in 3) What interests them more? - Team or market size, most probably both. 4) Are they driven by some mission that you can make a part of your story? 5) What is their ticket size? 6) Whom have they invested in the past? Like, to raise money for a sustainable packaging startup, I'd go for an investor that has shown inclination in such a direction before, who invests in such startups, and whose ticket size is inline of my expectations. Previous experience, and strategic importance matter as well.

No one likes to be used. Same are the investors. Engage with them meaningfully in some way first. Maybe get introduced by a connection, better if the connection is a reputed figure. Talk about your startup, talk about the investors' experience, and try to grasp their wisdom. Be likeable. Build a repo. Asking for money would then become easier. Tip: Connect with investors on LinkedIn. Regularly & meaningfully comment on their posts, not about your startup but something that is relevant to their post. Build a repo.

Show that people are interested in what you are building. Show downloads, active users, better if some paying customers. Show that people are talking about your product. In B2B, try getting LoIs, or mentions from your customers. Case studies & testimonials are other ways.

1. Do your research beforehand on whom you are pitching: - know the specialization of the investor: Don’t try to pitch your deep tech startup to a food and nutrition investor - know the life stage of a startup the investor is interested in - try to figure out what is the preferred presentation style of the investor. PowerPoint? Open discussion? Other? 2. A pitch is a 2 way discussion. Don’t deliver a monologue. Pay attention to the nonverbal communication of the listener, understand the signs which tells you they have a question, or they are bored etc. 3. You have to sell yourself and the team. Whilst traction is super important , in many cases investors put their money on the people behind the idea believing that they can be successful

REVENUE! If you want to attract stakeholders and VC, learn how to sell and bring in revenue. This should be at the top of the list.