Leaders and Funding
European Sovereignty and Leadership Institute
Leadership 5.0 as the only acumen needed to thrive and steer the entire community towards prosperity.
One of the traits of a leader is the ability to market his activity, presents in a clear conceptual way the purpose of his company or business unit. Along the lifecycle of a business, funds are oftentimes necessary: for scaling, development of new project, launch of a new product, or acquisition purposes.
The leader therefore needs to convince, banks, angel investors, venture capital funds, amongst others. Beyond the activity itself and the core of the firm, investors, need to believe in:
-A story
-A brand, an identity
-A leader and a management team
?This will give the first impression whether in a face-to-face meeting or in front of an audience. This is usually a good brief introduction.
Then the below fundamental questions need to be addressed in order to convince investors :
Identity card of the company
Can you develop a solid brand and community around it ?
Activity
What is purpose of the company ? What problem is it solving ?
How does it solve the problem?
Competitors
What is competition doing or not doing relatively to this problem ?
What do you think your competitive advantage is ?
Scalability
Is the business scalable ? How ?
How big can this go ? What is the growing strategy?
?Metrics
What are and will be the key revenue drivers?
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What are the key metrics you can show that would convince?
Progress of the business and traction up to now?
What are your current roadblocks?
?
Market
Who are the customers? How do they think / act ?
Who are the competitors?
How big is the market now ? Expected Market size in 2-3-5 years or more?
Where are you currently positioned in the market ? Are you in a niche?
?
Team and organizational structure
What is your story? What makes you unique?
Who is your team? What is its strength?
How is the company structured ? Can it sustain a rapid growth ?
If yes how would you scale your business ?
?
Funding
What will be the use of the funds ?
Have you raised funds in the past, how did it go ?
Conversations and presentations cannot last forever, and the attention of investors need to be caught quickly – Then, for the good impression to be retained , the leader must be prepared for the above questions at the minimum. Not only for the sake of convincing, but because the above elements are essential to the ability of the business to be sustained and grow.