Pitch Videos: A Growing Trend in Start-ups & Investors’ Community

Gone are these days where entrepreneurs used to make a PowerPoint presentations and writing long emails to reach potential investors.

There’s no question that video pitches are growing in popularity with start-up founders and investors because they can help communicate their start-up story more effectively, increase engagement, and show founders' passion. Global entrepreneurs using start-up pitch videos to get funded.

If you thought of investors perspective and think how it's worth? Investors are instinctive and put a lot of faith in the start-up founders they fund, so a short, video pitch can help you stand out among the mountain of funding pitch deck submissions.

Creating a video pitch, helps them visualize it, and addressed their questions & objections more effectively.

In video pitching, founders get to showcase the preparedness, commitment, and passion VCs are looking for, all while telling their story which could be more accessible and reach more investors and grab investors’ attention and we all know that none of that is effectively transmitted in a passive pitch deck. Further, it allows start-up founders to create a deeper connection with passion even before a meeting in an asynchronous way with the investors.

Video pitch endorsed by key global investors

David Rose (the Father of Angel Investing in New York) is a serial entrepreneur and one of the most active angel investment groups. A panel discussion talks about the benefits of using a video pitch, especially if the interaction between the entrepreneur and potential investors is in the early stage.

Joanne Wilson (investor at Gotham Gal Ventures) said he would love to see more video pitches in fundraising. He mentioned that he gets pitch decks all the time, which are interesting certainly in what people’s thought processes are. Joanne mentioned one key point that, if suppose 85% of founders sent him a video pitch instead, he probably would answer 85% of those emails.

Fred Wilson (investor at Union Square Ventures) advised the founders that, record a short video pitch (less than three minutes) in which they communicate who you are and your team, what the idea is, and why you are working on this idea. The conventional pitch deck is efficient and powerful, but everyone uses it, and it does not allow you to stand out and be noticed in a sea of pitch decks received by the investors.

Samil Shah (investor at Haystack & Lightspeed ventures partners) said during a panel discussing (what kills the start-up pitch), When founders cannot tell who is on the core founding team, and why they are special. Early-stage funding is often all about the founders and teams they form. Yet, he gets decks where there is no team slide, or worse, there is just a circle with a face that says ‘Mr. XYZ / CTO’ or ‘Ms. XYZ / Business.’

Alex Iskold (Investor at 2048 Ventures) We need to switch to video as at least being a strong part of the introduction. Decks are flat and impersonal. They lack passion. Let’s have more video pitches, please.

Evan Fisher (Founder Unicorn_Cap & Minimal Capital, the United States) mentioned “Don’t send VC a cold deck ever again: Start sending video pitches” in one of the articles in Tech Crunch publication.

Some key global accelerator programs have started to encourage founders to include a video pitch as part of their application.

Paul Graham (Co-Founder at Y Combinator) said — Statistically we are much more likely to interview people who submit a video.

What is all you need to know about creating a video pitch to support your fundraising process?

Now I think you have decided that you need a video pitch, where do you start? Where can you create a video pitch? So, need not worry, there are several emerging/popular platforms where you can record your video pitch with your pitch deck (pdf). But it’s very important to create your video pitch with help of technology-enabled start-up ecosystem-based platforms and it’s my personal experience GoToPitch would be a great platform to try.

So, let’s make it easy for you to create, share, and track a video pitch. You can stand out by having a video pitch that gives a clear idea of what you do, without giving away anything confidential. Here’s how it works:

· Provide basic info about your start-up by signup

· Upload your pitch presentation (pdf file) and record your video pitch by explaining your pitch presentation.

· The technology does the rest.

The goal is to spark the interest of investors so that they contact you for the next steps. A video pitch would be the best option to showcase founders’ passion to the investors and that may create interest among investors to go for further discussion.

To conclude, I must say that the most fundamental aspect that affects the success of startups is raising fundings. Without it, even the greatest ideas go down. 90% of start-ups die, mostly because they couldn’t get the investors that will help them to make the business a successful one.

That is why it is important for the founders to follow the trends and video pitch is a new trend and in coming future, if I say till 2023 it would be the new way of fundraising with advanced technologies, and I am sure GoToPitch would be the first comer in this industry to serve the founders and investors. So, if you have decided on the fundraising then a video pitch would be the icing on the cake when reaching to the investors.