What 25 years of asking for money taught me about The Pitch
Pitching to investors is a crucial activity for high-growth startups. But most startup founders don’t have much if any experience getting in front of investors to raise money and are unaware of how they need to approach the pitch.
Veteran Sacramento serial entrepreneur, venture partner, and Swimply VP of Revenue Sonny Mayugba has been pitching for over 25 years. At our March StartupSac Office Hours event, we welcomed Sonny to the webinar to explain the mindset of investors, what they’re looking for, and the ‘kung fu’ tips he has learned for raising money from investors.
In an engaging and interactive 90+ minute session, Sonny shared insights he has learned over the years, fielded questions from the audience, and live-critiqued the pitches of 10 entrepreneurs who bravely accepted the challenge to present and get Sonny’s feedback during the webinar.
Sonny’s Startup Investment Pitch Tips
- Get to the product in less than 30 seconds
- Show, don’t tell in one slide
- Tell a story through a use case
- Pause
- Find your “x” for “y”
- Leave important elements out
- Find your Wow! moment
- Practice. Get feedback
- Have a driver and be Mick and Keith
- Eye contact and connection
- Why now and why you to solve this problem
- Know the space… like REALLY know it
- Metrics, metrics, metrics
- Relax, have fun and play to win
Download Sonny’s slide deck from the webinar.
Watch the video of the webinar below to learn more about each of these tips above and hear great feedback from Sonny on the live-pitches.
About Sonny Mayugba
VP of Revenue, Swimply; Serial Entrepreneur
I’ve been a founder for nearly all my life. Most recently, I founded a food tech mobile app called Requested that became a food delivery app called Waitr, where I was the founding Chief Marketing Officer. Waitr became a highly successful mobile on-demand restaurant ordering and delivery company. In this role, I was instrumental in positioning Waitr, which became a public company in late 2018, for the national stage, and led integration efforts surrounding Waitr’s acquisition of Bite Squad, a Minneapolis-based online restaurant food delivery service. Stewarding user acquisition, activation, retention, and company revenue growth, I helped Waitr Holdings grow to serve cities in 700 cities across the U.S. with millions of customers, garnering annual net revenues of $150M. Since Waitr, I recently joined the team at Swimply as the VP of Revenue and I am a venture partner with Launch and Spero Ventures. Prior to Waitr, I worked at Facebook in Global Business Marketing.
