Key takeaways from my founder breakfast with Matthew Codd yesterday, written by the attendees:

Dhiren Gami - Keep messaging tight, keep messaging real 🤘🤓

Alison Berryman -

1️⃣ 𝗘𝗻𝗾𝘂𝗶𝗿𝗲 𝗮𝗯𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝘄𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝘆 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝘀𝗽𝗲𝗰𝗶𝗳𝗶𝗰𝗮𝗹𝗹𝘆 𝗹𝗼𝗼𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗳𝗼𝗿.  
Aside from the obvious benefit - that you'll find out what they want, and can then better position yourself to match that need - this has the effect of levelling the playing field, by showing the other person that you are also looking for a good fit.

2️⃣ 𝗙𝗼𝗰𝘂𝘀 𝗼𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗯𝗹𝗲𝗺 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝘀𝗼𝗹𝘃𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗺.
Try to distil this into 8 words or less. (Good luck!)

3️⃣ 𝗠𝗮𝗸𝗲 𝗶𝘁 𝗲𝗮𝘀𝘆 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗺 𝘁𝗼 𝘀𝗲𝗹𝗹 𝙮𝙤𝙪.  
If the person you're talking to likes what you're selling, they will probably need to persuade someone else further up the chain to buy into the idea.  Whether you're speaking to VCs, enterprise customers, or your line manager, it's worth remembering that you need to give them the tools and info they need to sell you to the next person up the chain.

Jake Fieldsend - the session highlighted the significance of founder-led sales in the early post-launch phase. Also, the importance of levelling up discussions with investors/VCs, and ensuring that we have concisely articulated the problem that we are solving for our customers in our deck (so even my mum could understand and relay it back!!)

Hervé Ky - 🚀 Refining your elevator pitch: In our case for KeyBento, switching from “We are building a home swapping platform” to “We are allowing millions of families to save thousand of €/£/$ a year”

🌟 Do unconventional things to appeal to VCs: share video or audio introduction and send a printed deck to their offices with hand notes

Ilona Melnychuk - all founders are salespeople, whether use the word ‘sales’ or not. Call it negotiation, emotional intelligence, marketing - whatever feels good. In the end, it all comes down to driving some change.

#founders #startups #venturecapital #buildinginpublic #investinginpublic