How Do I Ask Money From An Investor?
This article is written by Brian Malika, a Contributor Author at Startup Turkey.
Bill Kenney has founded 6 companies and currently leads two growing ventures. MEET (My Expo & Event Team) specializes in helping growth companies and economic development agencies effectively exhibit at trade shows. Test My Pitch is an online platform helps students, entrepreneurs and professionals develop their communication skills quickly in a safe and collegial environment.
As a startup, after every pitch, you must have stated the customer problem, offered an innovative solution, answered the investor questions and finally, you have reached the point where you need to ask for money.
Well, if you reach the point where you need to ask for investor money during your pitch and you notice that everyone in the audience room is not looking at their phones, murmuring to each other for simply paying attention, then congratulations! you just won their interest
in whatever your presenting.
But for most cases, Start-up Founders find it hard to speak of a figure to an investor. ‘’Like how do I just tell someone I want this amount of money? ‘’ Some Start-up Founders find it extremely hard to answer to manage this question on asking for money.
Validating Your Start-up Innovative Ideas Always Negotiates Better
When it reaches that point when you have to ask for that cheque to be signed by the interested investor then please never ever say that you estimate you'll to need such and such an amount of investment. If you estimate the amount of money that should be invested in your start-up,then chances are that you will be ripped off by the investor.
Instead, negotiate for investment by validating what your start-up has to offer through the return on investment model to the investor. This means that you should talk of market figures that are verifiable when asking for an investment. This is how validating an investment request looks like in 5 clear steps:
1. Simply tell the investors that if you give me an ‘X’ amount of money, for this particular period of time, then I will be able to buy "Y" number of tools, hire such and such experts who will cost me a clear amount of money.
2. Thereafter, I will produce this amount of products or services a certain number of customers at this particular competitive price.
3. As promised, your investment will be able to return after a particular period of time with such a margin of profit.
4. And in the unfortunate event that we don’t meet the projected target, then this is what will happen to your investment. Be courageous enough to address the fear that in case your start-up doesn't make profits then this is what will happen. Such a move proves to the investor that you are not gambling with their money.
5. Therefore, am asking for this amount of money as an investment to sufficiently meet the goals of my innovative idea.