A contact of mine asked me yesterday for examples of a good investor presentation and I thought it would be a good topic for my blog. I pointed him to one of the best writeups I have found on making an investor pitch using the principals of customer development.

In this post Steve Blank calls out some of the pitfalls of typical investor pitches and focuses in on how the more data you can present from your interactions with customers and prospects the better. It’s all about showing what you have learned and how it has made your company better.

I especially liked his call out of where you are in your startup cycle:

1. On the bottom, and least convincing are statements about your “idea.”
2. Next are hypothesis – “I think customers will care about x or y”
3. Better are facts from customers – “We interviewed 30 customers with 20 questions”
4. Even better is “Customer Validation”– “We just got $50K from a customer” or “we got 100,000 users spending x minutes on our site”
5. Finally if you’re ever so lucky – “Everyone’s buying in droves and we’re here because we need money to scale and execute”

Strive to be further down the list and communicate that to your investors. If you are looking to raise money, Steve Blank’s post is worth another look.