Investors can access your pitch videos and decks remotely, with SHELA PITCH
The business world moves quick, and pitching to investors can't wait another day..
Of course, it’s generally not a good idea to send your groundbreaking business proposal to interested parties at 3AM, but time is certainly of the essence when it comes to making big moves (like those involving financing). As various industries continue to evolve into remote workflows, offering a variety of work-from-home opportunities for employees, so has the investor networking community, begun to migrate to the cloud. It does benefit both parties, having the ability to connect with investors and startups remotely, but there are some unique challenges presented. Challenges which companies like SHELA PITCH, are solving.
What is SHELA PITCH?
SHELA PITCH is a virtual Startup Hub that connects founders and investors in a secure, virtual marketplace, offering services that improve the chances of startups matching with proper investments. In the traditional startup-investor world, multiple meetings would be commenced, to properly vet the company's ability to handle their business (for the investors peace of mind), as well as for the company, finding a trustworthy investor which they resonate with. With every step we make towards a remote-working society, the opportunities to meet face-to-face are becoming far and few in between.
In the startup and investor world, timing is everything, and a conversation that ends up spanning several weeks (versus a couple of days, digitally), could mean a lost opportunity to both parties. If you have a startup or business that is seeking investment, or an investor looking to join an investor hub, check out SHELA PITCH. SHELA PITCH takes a unique approach to networking, using technology, media and Subject Matter Experts (SMEs).
How does SHELA PITCH work?
For businesses & startups
The SHELA PITCH platform offers services to businesses that improve the overall presentation and financial models necessary to convince investors. As someone who very early on, attempted to pitch our digital networking app idea to a panel of investors, I quickly found that we did not have nearly the amount of documentation that investors were looking for. Lesson learned. Having a platform like SHELA PITCH to give us the tools needed for a successful pitch, would have been very useful. Best of all, SHELA PITCH is free to sign up and use the platform to connect, and all startups on the platform can use their recruitment solutions for free as well!
You can get a sense of the types of documents that SHELA PITCH will help you create; on their website, but as a quick scope, you can expect to create the following:
- Elevator Pitch
- Pitch Deck (formal)
- Feasibility Assessments
- Due Diligence Reports
- Valuation Reports
- Financial Models
- Cash Flow Projections
Not to mention, each startup who uses SHELA PITCH gets a FREE initial startup evaluation, which compares your startup to five key data points and gives you an automatic score, which is your first impression.
To create an account, just head over to the SHELA PITCH website and enter some information related to your business. Investors will need to email SHELA PITCH directly, to get a registration key in order to signup. This is part of the vetting process that makes SHELA PITCH so valuable to investors and inversely, to businesses as well. Higher barrier to entry typically means better quality of users.
For investors and accelerators
For investors, SHELA PITCH simplifies the process of qualifying startups, by establishing barriers to entry for platform use (so you don’t get random people joining and pitching bunk ideas). Each startup that joins SHELA PITCH also gets a “first impression score”, which further pre-qualifies the companies that have potential and those perhaps less-so. Investors typically have different agendas when going into an agreement with a company, so these pre-qualifications are designed to only review the data points, and let the ultimate decision go to the investors.
SHELA PITCH also reduces complexity with organizing information from businesses, reducing the time and effort needed to “coach” businesses on what (and how) to present. Some investors prefer being hands-on, while others are very much hands-off, so again it comes down to investor preference. SHELA PITCH accommodates both. Additionally, SHELA PITCH guides the overall investment process, which takes time and pressure off investors, in their extremely busy world.
When you enroll as an investor, you can self-certify yourself as either a High Net Worth Investor; meaning you have a NET income over £100K (roughly $130K USD), or a Sophisticated Investor, someone who is an active member of a network of business angels for at least 6 months. There are some other criteria that go into these investor types as well, which can be seen here.
What’s the cost of using SHELA PITCH?
SHELA PITCH is FREE to sign up and use the platform to connect, for both business and investors. All startups on the platform can also use their recruitment solutions for free, as an added bonus. SHELA PITCH makes its money from an extensive list of services offered to both startups and investors, including things like professional photography for founders, professional pitch review, group pitch seminars (no more than 6 people), and much more. You can take a look at all of their packages on their website. For any questions about SHELA PITCH or the services they offer, you can reach out to them on their resources page, here.
SHELA PITCH's partners help to provide a holistic support ecosystem for Startups on the platform.
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Aleksey Weyman
Aleksey Weyman is a web designer, music artist and creator of Millennial Moderator.
