Your business needs to be primed for potential investors. Most investors don’t have the luxury or patience to spend much time understanding your business and its worth. This is why Brian C Jensen will synthesize the important checklists for your business to pass the test of viability.
Business language and protocols dictate that you get to the point fast and remain factual on all accounts. Brian C Jensen will quickly run through the 10-point investor checklist to demonstrate the required persona with you. Let’s see how many you tick!
5 Business Points by Brian C Jensen
1. Your Past Performance
To see where you are headed, you must reflect on where you started. And how far you got. If you want to impress investors, you need to show your financial performance and how it broke records. Remember that investors want to see the Return On Investment (ROI) that backs up your projections. Some key metrics that’d help them evaluate your business are its revenue growth, monthly recurring revenue (MRR), and gross profit margin. Brian C Jensen recommends keeping other stats such as customer acquisition, net income, revenue per employee, and liquidity at hand.
2. Unique Selling Point
Your unique selling point is your value proposition and the novelty of your business idea. If you can sell your idea to investors and convince them it’s a unique product or invention, you will be able to carve out your competitive advantage.
3. Your Market
Does the market for your product and service exist? If so, what are the numbers? To substantiate you have an audience, you need to lay out your customer base.
4. Your Business Plan
You are running to or hoping to run a financially profitable enterprise. As per Brian C Jensen, you must build a strong data-based business plan that has your projected timeline, marketing plans, sales channels, and competitor analysis.
5. Investment Structure
Estimate your business value, make a stockholder’s agreement and cover the legal formalities of buying ownership so everybody’s rights and obligations are clear and contingencies are in place.
5 Founder Points by Brian C Jensen
1. Storytelling
Businesses and brands are all about pushing a narrative. The stronger your narrative is, the more impressive your pitch becomes. Investors want to see the impact you are trying to create and whether it resonates with them or not.
2. Your Background
Besides the story behind your unique idea, you need to share your background and that of your team. A business is deemed only as strong as its weakest player. So, in addition to financial data, demonstrate your experience and the strength of your business team.
3. Problem-Solving Persona
For entrepreneurs looking for investment, you must be passionate and driven and remain dedicated against all odds. Your investors will trust you if you have experienced setbacks and countered them.
4. Buy-Back Offer
As a founder, you can only convince investors if you are willing to place those bets yourself. Brian C Jensen highly recommends working on exit plans and sharing that with investors. Give them a buy-back offer so they know their investment is secure.
5. Business Readiness
You have to be ready, and so should be your business for investment. That means having concrete and actionable plans and a strong team ready to execute business ideas.