A look at history
Some entrepreneurs take time out to look at what has gone before, to make sure that their idea is truly new and unique, or, if not, that they have something that is much better (10X maybe) that what exists today.
Learning from the lessons of the past can be useful because the investing community is relatively small and they have seen thousands of propositions over their careers. Most investors have memories of all of the pitches they have sat through. Your objective is to come out of a pitch meeting with a positive outcome. You might like to think of being able to answer the following:
- What companies in your space have come before you with the same or similar propositions?
- Were they successful or did they fail?
- If they failed which investors lost money and how much?
- What is different this time around?
- How has the marketplace or the customer and their needs/demand changed since then?
- What unique understanding of your prospective customer needs do you have that makes your startup different from previous ones?
- Is anyone else operating in the same space as you, or in similar or adjacent spaces? If there are, how do you plan to turn this into an advantage rather than it be seen as a weakness?