What are you as an entre­pre­neur focus­ing on in your daily strug­gle to suc­cess? Are you look­ing for a vic­to­ry or are you mak­ing sure not to be defeat­ed? Be aware of this sim­ple recipe: Suc­cess is the absence of defeats, not a vic­to­ry. A vic­to­ry is the inevitable result of pre­vent­ing defeats. This is my cen­tral statement.
What does that mean for your start­up? Let’s have a look at a crit­i­cal aspect in the life of an entre­pre­neur: The often long and windy road to get­ting funded.
The art of how to get investors on board is def­i­nite­ly one of the — if not THE — most active­ly dis­cussed topic in the start­up sphere. Hav­ing been sit­ting on both sides of the table — as an entre­pre­neur and as an investor — I don’t think that there is some­thing as a per­fect pitch. Most entre­pre­neurs sift through gazil­lions of rec­om­mend­ed slides and styles. Many VCs have their pre­ferred pitch styles — some even expect you to build your pre­sen­ta­tion based on their frameworks.
My expe­ri­ence: there are as many per­fect pitch­es as there are audi­ences. I have seen — and pre­pared — pitch­es marked as “super” by one investor and torn apart by the next one. In other words: the best pos­si­ble pitch is the one which per­suades the individual(s) sit­ting on the other side of the table at that very moment.
But — how to pre­pare such a pitch? Or — is there such a pitch — or should­n’t you pre­pare as many decks as you have invitations?
No — I don’t think you have to do that. What you should do is to pre­pare a flaw­less pitch with­out any major defi­cien­cies. More you can’t do, and more you should­n’t do: most of you will have lots more than 20 pitch­es before the first investor gets excit­ed. That said, the best thing you can do is to pre­pare in the best way you can: Know every­thing about your mar­ket, your prod­uct, your SWOT, your com­pe­ti­tion, and your poten­tial investor.
That’s it. Just present a solid, flaw­less pitch in a per­suad­ing man­ner and the rest will fol­low. If not, it was­n’t the right investor. You don’t need to win this pitch, but you absolute­ly have to NOT LOSE it! Remem­ber: Suc­cess is the absence of defeats, not a vic­to­ry. Vic­to­ries of all dif­fer­ent kinds will be the nat­ur­al result of not being defeated.
The photo was made dur­ing a run in beau­ti­ful Forsten­rieder Park, south of Munich.

defeat success victory