What Part of Your Team Should You Talk About the Most?
This article is written by Nardine B. M’barek, a Contributor Author at Startup Istanbul. Part of a series on Andrea Barrica's sessions at Startup Istanbul.
Andrea Barrica is a Philipino-American woman who was raised in the USA. She is a venture partner residing in San Francisco, and working with a company called ‘500 Startups’. She is also the founder of O.School; which goal is to make sure that the next generations have far more resources than the previous ones when it comes to Education.
Mrs. Andrea Barrica is an international pitch coach. She traveled the world on many occasions and had the chance to mentor and judge multiple companies and entrepreneurs who were pitching. During Startup Istanbul 2015, she was present with us and gave a speech that tackled many aspects of pitching, including how should a pitch be, what should you do in order to make it successful, and what are the wrong things to do while pitching.
Since she is a pitching coach, Mrs. Barrica took she chance and gave our audience a few tips regarding pitching. If you are a pre-launch company for example, then you are going to be building a bigger vision of your company while pitching, as well as telling a story about your market. You should probably talk a lot about your team since a team is the most important aspect of a company, and having a well-organized and competent team would prove to people that this is going to be successful and that it is worth their time and money.
Anyone who is interested in a pre-launched company, and who actually placed a bet on this company would be in most cases because of the team, according to Mrs. Barrica. Now, what do we mean if we say that a team is a good one? What are the actual attractions of a team? Mrs. Barrica answered that question by stating the example of a previous founder who existed in that company. If such a member exists in the team of a certain company, then it would make that team more powerful and more appreciated, of course.
Another factor would be the deep domain experience; if the team members are well-accustomed with the domain in which they are working, then that experience that they had previously acquired would be a huge success as well as appreciation factor for both the team and the company.
If a team member also joined a big company previously, then the whole team becomes valuable. By big company we mean those companies that are very well-known such as Google or Youtube, or even a big food chain company. Be sure that any information that you mention in your 2-minutes pitch regarding your team would be something rather new that would furthermore increase the investors’ will to fund your project or company, and definitely not a piece of information that would be out of context and unnecessary in your pitch.
Speaking of teams and team members, Mrs. Barrica brought the example of a company at 500 Startups called MapJam who are a mapping company basically. She mentioned that the only thing that they mention concerning their team is the fact that their founders, who are a group of 50-year-old Australian men, actually met each other in the 8th-grade geography class. This kind of very interesting and very specific stories can also be used when talking about your team if you are a pre-launched company, and that is also what matters the most to the judges.
https://vimeo.com/141908190