- Explaining what your startup is all about in a face-to-face meeting with a VC is one of the toughest challenges for any startup founder or CEO.
- Having an impressive pitch deck is great, but that won't be enough if you don't wow a VC investor when you finally meet in person.
- We asked top VCs from Goldman Sachs, Kleiner Perkins, Sapphire Ventures, Intel Capital and Dell Technologies Capital about the most memorable and impressive startup pitches they've ever heard.
- They said the CEOs of these 9 startups killed it in their VC presentations.
- Click here for more BI Prime stories.
Convincing investors to finance your startup can be tough.
An impressive, fancy-looking pitch deck, packed with data on what you're building, could help. But in many cases, you need to sell your idea and your story in person.
It's that face-to-face meeting with the VCs you hope will be wowed by your story that will likely determine if you get the funding you need. And that's not always easy.
Making a presentation to VCs "is an art," Sapphire Ventures President Jai Das told Business Insider. "It's how well you narrate your story, how you create an option that a lot of people get interested in."
We asked executives from major VC firms about the most impressive startup pitches they've watched in their careers.
Here are the founders and execs from 9 startups who wowed top investors from Goldman Sachs, Sapphire Ventures, Kleiner Perkins, Intel Capital, and Dell Technologies Capital:
Avaamo: Not just another AI startup
Startups offering AI-powered tools are a dime a dozen nowadays. But Avaamo, which uses conversational AI technology to build business applications, stood out in the eyes of Intel Capital managing director Arun Chetty.
Founders Ram Menon and Sriram Chakravarthy, both veterans of the tech industry, clearly had both the technical and business expertise to build a company, he said. They launched the startup, which is based in Los Altos, California, in 2014,
They also told a clear and compelling story.
"While their initial vertical focus was financial services, they were able to clearly demonstrate their roadmap to expand into healthcare, retail and IT support and beyond," Chetty told Business Insider.
Other startups would do that too, of course. But while other startups would "simply list other industries in their roadmap," Chetty said, the Avaamo team wowed him with a detailed longer-term strategy.
"Avaamo already had models built out for these verticals," he said. "Avaamo's pitch was compelling not only because they showed how they make money out of the gate and could scale, but also how their product demonstrates clear ROI [return on investment] for their customer. This is something I don't see a lot of in the AI space."
Plus they had an executive team with impressive credentials, he said: "While a lot of entrepreneurs in the AI space emphasize the technical chops on their executive team, Avaamo had a deep bench of senior team members with enterprise software experience, in addition to the technical chops."
GitLab: Spotlight on market momentum
There's nothing like clear market momentum to impress a VC. That was certainly the case with GitLab, which makes software development tools. The Silicon Valley startup, which was founded in 2014, has raised about $436 million from investors, including Goldman Sachs.
James Hayward, Goldman Sachs' managing director, recalled how GitLab CEO Sid Sijbrandij gave "a very compelling pitch."
"We were impressed by the GitLab CEO's articulation and vision for the company," he told Business Insider.
GitLab, which is now valued at more than $1 billion, clearly laid out "why there was a significant addressable market" in software development and "how they are competitively positioned" to play a leading role in that space.
"We also were able to see first-hand the exceptional traction across both its developers' community and enterprise clients, underpinned by strong feedback from its client base, including the Goldman Sachs engineering teams who were active users of the platform and strong advocates," he said.
DataRobot: Killing it with the product demo
DataRobot helps businesses develop AI-powered tools. The Boston startup, which was founded in 2012, has also drawn some attention for a tool that could purportedly analyze the trajectory of a couple's relationship.
That doesn't really have anything to do with using AI to run a business, but it highlights a point raised by Sapphire Ventures President Jai Das on why he was impressed by the Data Robot team, led by CEO Jeremu Achin. DataRobot has raised $430 million from investors including Sapphire Ventures.
"With DataRobot, we had never seen the kind of reaction from our CXO (C-level execs) network when they demo'd their product, with most CXO's wanting more in-depth proof of concept follow ups," Das told Business Insider.
That's an important tip for startups gearing up for a face-to-face meeting with VCs: your pitch decks and speeches are important, but you better make sure your product demo is solid.
"The product demo is extremely important for us," Das said. "A company's go-to-market and sales strategy can be adjusted as needed. However, a poorly designed product, or a product which is not designed to fit the target market, can't be fixed — especially at the later stages where we invest."
Intercom: The power of first impressions
Intercom offers a messaging platform that helps businesses communicate more efficiently with customers. Founded in 2011, the San Francisco startup has raised $241 million from investors, including Kleiner Perkins.
The Intercom pitch to Kleiner Perkins is an example of the power of first impressions.
Kleiner Perkins partner Mamoon Hamid, an early investor in Slack, Box and Yammer, said he was almost instantly impressed with Intercom CEO and co-founder Eoghan McCabe the first time they met.
"You saw the depth of thinking and the ability to build what they were talking about and so you see it in the presentation," he told Business Insider.
Clari: Grit and persistence
Clari uses AI to manage and improve revenue operations. The San Francisco startup has raised $121 million from investors that include Sapphire Ventures.
Jai Das, Sapphire Ventures' president and managing director, said he typically looks for startup CEOs and management teams that "have the grit and persistence to go all the way to build an iconic company."
That's what he saw in the Sunnyvale, California startup whose technology became a "de facto standard for forecasting quarterly sales among most of our portfolio companies, to the point where most board members were asking for the Clari sales forecast rather than their own CRO's forecast."
Sapphire Ventures had initially passed on the startup which Das has admitted was a mistake.
That became clear when they saw Clari, which was founded in 2012, gaining market traction and winning over enterprise customers, such as Adobe and Lenovo, and more startups, including some that Sapphire had invested in.
"That was the 'Aha' moment," Das told Business Insider in an interview last year, when he said, "Oh shoot, we should have done that in the last round."
Netskope: Funding at first sight
Cloud security startup Netskope, which was founded in 2012 and is based in Santa Clara, California, has raised $400 million from venture capital investors including Kleiner Perkins.
Kleiner Perkins partner Mamoon Hamid echoed what he said about Intercom's Eoghan McCabe: first impressions are important.
Mamid said he knew immediately in their very first meeting that Beri was for real, that he knew what he was doing and was going to build the startup that he was asking them to invest in.
"With Sanjay Barry of Netskope, on the spot you're like, 'You know, this guy's got it figured out,'" Hamid told Business Insider. "It was kind of the first impression: 'Oh, yeah. They've got it figured out.'"
Tetrate: Authenticity and vision
Silicon Valley startup Tetrate, which was founded in 2018 and helps enterprises manage network traffic and security, has raised $12.5 million from investors, including Dell Technologies Capital.
Deepak Jeevankumar, managing director at Dell Technologies Capital, cited the "authenticity of the founding team" as a key factor in the firm's decision to invest.
Tetrate founders Varun Talwar and Jeyappragash Jeyakeerthi are veterans of the tech industry. Talwar had worked as a product manager at Google where he helped lead the creation of Istio, an open source networking technology.
The Tetrate founders, Jeevankumar told Business Insider, had a "vision for the microservices revolution in the networking, identity and security layers."
Game.tv: Solid lead in a growing market
Founded in 2018, Game.tv is a gaming startup that has raised $25 million from investors, including Intel Capital. The Silicon Valley company created Tourney, an AI-powered esports tournament platform for mobile games.
It's a growing space where Game.tv has clearly established a solid presence. That's what quickly caught the attention of Arun Chetty, Intel Capital's managing director.
"One of the first things I look for is what the company's unfair advantage is," he told Business Insider. "Do they have a superior community of users? Do they have compelling IP [intellectual property]? It has to be something unique that we haven't seen before."
And Game.tv., led by CEO Rosen Sharma, immediately struck Chetty as unique.
"They had a superior community and the ability to scale quickly which tells me they have a great opportunity to reach a large segment of the esports market."
The Game.tv team "also demonstrated a clear vision of audience and community," Chetty said. "Rosen Sharma knows ws exactly where he wants the company to be — the de facto esports platform, for mobile and PC gaming."
Uniphore: Wowing a tech legend
Umesh Sachdev didn't just impress any venture capitalist. The founder and CEO of AI startup Uniphore wowed the tech legend John Chambers, who has actually become his mentor.
This happened not in a VC pitch presentation even though JC2 Ventures, the new fund launched by the former Cisco CEO, is now one of the investors in Uniphore. Founded in 2008, Uniphore, which makes AI-powered customer relations tools, has raised $67 million.
In 2016, Sachdev was named to the MIT Tech Review's list of the most promising entrepreneurs under 35. Chambers, one of the mentors for the MIT Tech Review program.
Chambers was the guest of honor when Uniphore, which started India in 2008, opened its US headquarters last year.
"Watch this company — I think it has a chance to light the world on fire," Chambers said at the event. On Sachdev, he added, "He is clearly wicked smart and he's never arrogant."
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