A Thought Leadership article we liked from Octopus Ventures:

10 questions to ask your investor during a pitch meeting

If you’re having a meeting, that means the investor has almost certainly already seen your deck, and now they want to dig in a little deeper.

Typically, these meetings run to between 30 and 45 minutes – and time really does fly. At the end of the discussion, when you’ve pitched your business and made an inarguable case for funding, there’s usually a spare 5 minutes or so, when founders turn things around and ask investors questions.

If the half hour pitch felt like it went quickly, these five minutes really disappear. But the time is prime real estate, and offers a really valuable opportunity not just to get critical information from prospective investors, but to leave a great – and lasting – impression.

Over the years, I’ve reviewed thousands of decks, spoken to hundreds of founders, and made tens of investments. During those meetings some founder questions have really stood out: they’ve piqued my curiosity, or got me thinking.

I wanted to share the 10 best of them here, so that you’ve got the best-possible advantage when it comes to maximising the returns on those precious five minutes. I’ve also highlighted a few things to look out for in the investor responses, and what they might indicate.

Q1. So, what do you think about what we are building?

Keeping this deliberately open ended allows you to gauge initial high-level sentiment.

Q2. What is it about our pitch deck that excited you? Follow up: Is there any area of concern from our pitch that might be an orange/red flag as you consider us for investment?

It’s always useful to hear where your pitch is scoring high – and where it stands to be improved. If the investors do highlight an area of concern, follow up with more data/ proof points/rationale in an email/data room/ notion page

Q3. How have you adjusted your requirements since the market downturn, and what do you now pay particularly close attention to?

A lot of investors, even at pre-seed, now focus on runway, traction and how a recessionary climate stands to impact the target customer segment.

Q4. What is the investment process, and who is on the investment committee (IC)?

Ideally the person you’re speaking to is the decision maker. If they’re not, make sure you still give them enough info to properly represent you as an...

Read the rest of this article at octopusventures.com...

Thanks for this article excerpt to Octopus Ventures. 

Photo by Mapbox on Unsplash

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