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4 Comments

One-sheet model is done, what now?

TLDR: Where do I send something like a one-pager? Or do angel investors prefer pitch decks these days?

I'm a full-stack product engineer with more than a few projects under my belt and one (for me) largish success. I've taken angel money for 3 different projects over the last 10 years. Two of those brought back amazing returns for what they were. However, one project, for which I took the largest amount of money ($300k ish), was a hard fizzle. It returned $0, and we gave up on it after a formal VC raise failed after due diligence was complete. Money ran out, much more was needed to get to market and we couldn't raise it in time, so I went back into the workforce. Lots of learning, yes, but it came with lots of pain and even some ruin.

Since then, in my last few projects, I bootstrap. My approach now is to try and vet as much as possible, and make a detailed execution/financial model in a sheet to see where the problems are, and essentially de-risk a project on paper. I work out cash flow, operational costs, revenue streams, acquisition costs, churn, etc. Anything and everything I can think of, and a timeline to see where it could go. I basically try to get to "XX dollars in, YYY dollars out" scenarios and work out as many pieces of the puzzle as I can, from front to back.

Sometimes I build the connecting pieces to remove risk or fill in blanks and get a better view for viability when necessary. If it still looks good, I usually build something awesome and then peter out at the marketing and customer acquisition phases. I haven't tried to get funding for a project again since then, even though a couple of the projects I've built seemed to be pretty viable model-wise.

Fast forward to now. Since July, I've been working on a project that addresses some of the biggest problems faced by homeschoolers/remote learners. We faced these problems last year in my family and are now joined by a large number of other families due to COVID. The change in market size seemed to make a potential project viable (aside from being personally viable), so I dug in. I had the benefit of being able to work on it full time over the summer, as I had just lost my job in June.

I vetted the perceived problems and some potential solutions by talking to other families online and in person, then running a survey. I built a couple small MVP products in order to run different market tests, ran FB campaigns across different landing pages to test messaging/ideas in order to know where to focus and get an idea of where the customers will come from and how much they cost to acquire. Now I'm building out the actual product, using foundations acquired through the test projects.

This all led me to create a one-sheeter summary with all the essential details of the business, as I'd like to TRY and get a small seed round and continue on it full-time while the opportunity is hot, or continue to bootstrap, get another job where I work on someone else's goals, and read the news about other founders getting investment. My lenses aren't so rosy anymore, and I don't want to burn someone else's money on another failure. However, I REALLY want to make a go for it! It looks very solid, and it wasn't a stretch to "make it work" on paper like some models have been!

So here's my problem:

In the past, serendipity seemed to make funding available to me. That sounds silly, and it's probably some function of my own fears now combined with how I perceive my past, rose-colored lenses. I don't know where to go with this now for the best shot at finding someone who will see the vision or even give it a look.

Where do I send something like a one-pager? Or do angel investors prefer pitch decks these days?

  1. 4

    Many folks seem to like the one-page deal memo, but for me, I love a great chart, great product, and customers who can't shut up about a product---because those three things are tough to fake!

    When you have thousands of startups coming at you a month--like a top investor does--you appreciate folks who are concise with their pitch.

    the goal of your email is to get a "quick zoom meeting."
    the goal of your "quick zoom meeting" is to get a "deep dive."
    the goal of the deep dive is to get to "diligence."
    the goal of diligence is to get to a term sheet
    the goal of the term sheet is to get a wire transfer

    So take it step-by-step and play the looooooong game with investors.

    If they don't get back to an email or DM, send them an update in 2 weeks when you have more good news.... and do that again... and again.... and again, until it is clear you're unstoppable.

  2. 2

    Hard to tell a golden solution. Different investors accept different form of presentation.

    If your product and traction are proofing your business. Even a one simple message can strike a conversation.

    There's no right or wrong. To avoid mis-communication, you can ask the investor about their reading preference. Always have different form of presentations ready, i.e. one-pager, pitch deck, doc, statistics etc

    Been investing and helping early-stage founders for years, we often hear questions like yours. Hence I made a side project to cover most concerns.

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      @felix12777 Hi, I really like your ventureslist.com website feel, could I ask where you got the design? Would love to use similar for a new project. steve

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        Thank you! I’m a designer, designed everything from scratch including the website.

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