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I often picture this Marty McFly moment where I'm sitting across from my 18-year-old self, this skinny pimply-faced kid who thought he could start an Internet company, and trying so hard to impart the wisdom that cost me decades to share.

It makes me wonder whether there could have been a directional shift if only someone was helpful enough to provide just the right advice at just the right time. It's what I've dedicated my whole life to in helping my fellow Founders, but still, I wonder if I could have helped myself.

If I only had three things I could tell this young fool — what would I say, and how do I think he would have taken it?

Lesson 1: "You have 50 Years"

I never realized how much time you really have to make an impact. When I was ...

The Solution Slide in an investor deck explains exactly how our startup company will solve the issue we set up in our Problem Slide. We'll walk you through the formula of the best decks in a single slide you can easily replicate.

Why does the Solution Slide Matter?

The Solution Slide takes our entire business model and distills it down to 1 or 2 sentences in our pitch presentation. If we did a good job to convince investors in the Problem Slide that we're tackling a big market of potential customers with severe consequences, then our Solution Slide will make us sound like a hero.

A Good Solution Slide is Focused

We want the investor to be crystal clear on this explanation of the business. We don't want them to go in multiple directions, so we'r...

The Problem Slide is the single most important slide in our entire Pitch Deck. If we can’t convince an investor to care about our Problem Statement Slide then our Solution Slide isn't going to matter to potential investors.

Everything Hinges on the Problem Slide.

Our pitch deck Problem Slide is the North Star for a winning pitch deck. Our Problem Slide will be what we map every aspect of our investor pitch deck too, from our Competition slide to our Revenue Traction, to our Marketing Plan. The best pitch deck examples absolutely nail the problem slides every time.

How do Most Investors think about the Problem Slide?

Before we begin building the Problem Slide for our pitch deck, let’s think about this slide from the investor’s perspective.&...

Congratulations! You've made it to the end of our four-part Funding Series:

Phase One - Structuring a Fundraise

Phase Two - Investor Selection

Phase Three - The Pitch

Phase Four - Investor Outreach

• Part 1 - Investor Outreach 

• Part 2 - Investor Introductions: How to Get Them 

• Part 3 - The Investor Email Pitch 

• Part 4 - How to Contact Investors ( ←YOU ARE HERE 😀)

Let’s dive in!

So you've got your list of angel investors, venture capitalists, random private investors, and even your rich Aunt and you're ready to blast all of them with your email pitch...

Please don't! Step.. away.. from.. the.. keyboard!

Most Founders (and we help thousands) wind up tanking their entire fundraising process the moment they hit the "send" button to potential i...

Funding a startup isn't easy, and anyone that has launched a startup knows this to be painfully true. You need money (like yesterday) and raising funds is "a process" — to state it simply. There are so many details to know and questions to ask before a round can even begin, and once the startup funding round is ready to rock, there are additional questions every founder needs to know the answer to before they take the plunge.

One of the most common questions asked — and arguably most important details to know is how much equity do you give away in seed round? With the help from members of our community, we are going to get into this question in further detail to demystify the information about raising seed capital and the amount of...

Continuing in Phase Four of a four-part Funding Series:

Phase One - Structuring a Fundraise

Phase Two - Investor Selection

Phase Three - The Pitch

Phase Four - Investor Outreach

• Part 1 - Investor Outreach 

• Part 2 - Investor Introductions: How to Get Them 

• Part 3 - The Investor Email Pitch ( ←YOU ARE HERE 😀)

• Part 4 - How to Contact Investors

Let’s dive in!

Nearly all potential investors require a solid email pitch before they are willing to take a meeting with a startup. A great Email Pitch won't guarantee you a meeting, but a bad one will definitely prevent one! Therefore, creating the perfect Email Pitch is essential if you want an investor to respond.

The perfect Email Pitch is very tight — just a few very well-crafted sentences to cr...

Startup Accelerators are programs that invest a small amount of capital into early-stage companies while providing programming and mentorship over a period of 3-6 months.

While startup accelerators have become wildly popular among early-stage startups, the answer to "What is an accelerator?" has morphed quite a bit over time. We hear about startup accelerators providing seed capital, mentorship with the business model, and ultimately introductions to venture capital at a "demo day" but how much of that is truly valuable?

Let's dig into what accelerator programs actually do, who they help, what benefits they provide, and what are some of the cons to joining them - and some new alternatives to the traditional startup accelerators.

What's the Bus...

Continuing in Phase Four of a four-part Funding Series:

Phase One - Structuring a Fundraise

Phase Two - Investor Selection

Phase Three - The Pitch

Phase Four - Investor Outreach

• Part 1 - Investor Outreach 

• Part 2 - Investor Introductions: How to Get Them ( ←YOU ARE HERE 😀)

• Part 3 - The Investor Email Pitch

• Part 4 - How to Contact Investors

Let’s dive in!

Before you try to connect angel investors or venture capitalists to secure funding, we want to ensure you are using the best possible inroad. That means before contacting a potential investor, we want to find the best way to make a warm introduction.

Startups sometimes forget that an angel investor or really any private investors are just regular people like us.

Their investment process starts wit...

Welcome to Phase Four of a four-part Funding Series — all about Investor Outreach:

Phase One - Structuring a Fundraise

Phase Two - Investor Selection

Phase Three - The Pitch

Phase Four - Investor Outreach

• Part 1 - Investor Outreach ( ←YOU ARE HERE 😀)

• Part 2 - Investor Introductions: How to Get Them

• Part 3 - The Investor Email Pitch

• Part 4 - How to Contact Investors

Let’s dive in!

Investor outreach strategy is an art form. Many founders will think about their investor outreach program as simply "carpet bombing" prospective investors with the same company story — which never, ever works for startups.

Instead, let's talk about how to build any investor outreach strategy that is customized toward highly specific target investors in a way that will make ou...

Continuing in Phase Two of a four-part Funding Series:

Phase One - Structuring a Fundraise

Phase Two - Investor Selection

• Part 1 - Introduction to Startup Investors

• Part 2 - How to find Startup Investors (←YOU ARE HERE 😀)

Phase Three - The Pitch

Phase Four - Investor Outreach

Let's dive in!

The search for investors takes time. However, we can at least make sure the time you do invest is well spent. These days “investor research” really means combing through a handful of databases and Web sites to find potential connections to the investment community.

Finding investors isn’t like finding a plumber. There’s no “directory of interested investors” available from the small business administration that you carpet bomb with emails and wait...