You’re about to meet an investor. What will he ask you? How do you prepare? Here’s what I ask…

1) Vision. The first thing I want to know is the founder’s vision for the company.

My #1 goal in a meeting is to understand the vision. If I don’t understand the scale of the opportunity before me, how can I make a good decision?

You want to be able to state the vision for your company in one clear sentence. Use this as a template: “The vision for Uber is to get anyone a ride anywhere, any time.”

I recently wrote a detailed post on how to nail the vision for your company, which you can find here.

2) What made you start this company? I want to see how much the founder cares about the problem.

To stick it out for 10 years and build this into a unicorn, they have to be obsessed with it.

3) Team. I want to know who they have working on this problem, and how they know them.

I love founders who have known each other a long time. They’ve proven they can get along!

I also want to know why this team is the right one for this job. What about their skills or experience makes them perfect?

4) Who writes code for this startup? Sometimes, a startup has technical folks that no longer code themselves. This question is designed to figure out who’s building and who’s managing.

I like to see half the team or more writing code for the startup.

Engineering-heavy teams tend to win. They can rapidly ship new features that customers want.

What I’m trying to avoid is startups that outsource their engineering to a dev shop. It’s expensive and risky.

4) Demo. Nothing beats seeing a product in action.

I’m looking for products that solve real problems. And I want them to be pretty and easy to use.

Aesthetics matter. Customers want to use pretty products, even in B2B!

5) How do you make money? I need to know what their revenue model is. Common revenue models are a SaaS fee or marketplace take rate.

Then, I do a little back of the envelope math….

How many potential customers exist? What are you charging? If I multiply those, I can estimate a market size.

I usually like to see markets well into the billions, preferably $10 billion plus.

6) Do you have a lead? I usually look for a lead investor. Party rounds can work too if there’s enough cash committed and wired.

I ask about this because I don’t want to be the only one investing in a company. I want to be part of a much larger round that can really get the startup to the next level.

Wrap-Up

These questions will vary from investor to investor. But you’ll see variations of them with many angels and VC’s you meet.

Think about each one and how you’ll answer it.

You don’t need a perfect answer. You just need one that’s clear, concise, and honest to where you are now.

What are investors asking you? What do you ask founders?

Leave a comment and let us know!

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