Another excellent set of guest lecturers in Digital Media Marketing at NYU Stern this week: Eric Hippeau, a venture capitalist famous for investing in Yahoo and the Huffington Post amongst many others, and David Ko, current head of everything mobile at the gaming giant, Zynga. The both of them dropped some great nuggets of wisdom on the class with advice to entrepreneurs – highlights follow.
Eric on worst things to do in a pitch:
- Have a bad or arrogant attitude.
- Give a lengthy, wordy, or winded presentation.
- Ignore the importance of the timing of the idea.
- Not recognize that probability dictates that other people are working on solving the exact same problem.
Eric’s suggestions for entrepreneurs:
- Have skin in the game – get money from family and friends invested in you and your idea. This shows credibility as you’re less likely to run away when Mom’s got a vested interest.
- A prototype is necessary, at least whenever possible.
- Angel investors are important because of the advice they can provide, not the money they can give you.
- The idea: has to be compelling, well-timed, forward-thinking and worth everyone’s time.
- The people: relevant industry experience is important, but not critical.
- Balance between idea and people: absolutely necessary.
- There must be a techie on the team if the idea is tech-focused.
- Understand how the business will be built.
- In your pitch, demonstrate knowledge of the marketplace and provide data points that can resonate with the audience.
- In your pitch, recognize there is competition and identify them.
- Figure out what sort of investors you’re looking for, and understand your options – make sure your target investors are a match for you and your idea.
- If you end up with 15-20% ownership of your company following funding, you’re in a good place.
- Live the trends; immerse yourself in the trends.
Eric’s sample pitch decks contained slides that:
- In really simply terms, detail the idea – why now, market details?
- How will the idea be executed – again in very simple descriptions.
- How will the idea make money?
- Marketing and distribution plans.
- Realistic projections of costs and revenues.
- Explanation of competitive products, services and firms.
- Buzz/media/awards are ok, but leave them to the end.
- A short appendix (such as user feedback blurbs) is ok.
David spent much of his time with us answering the many questions we had about his vision for mobile gaming, Zynga’s strategy, and cultural differences between Yahoo, where he’d worked for a decade, and Zynga. David recounted the pitch given him by Mark Pincus, CEO of Zynga: Google = search, Amazon = shop, Facebook = share, and the goal is to get to Zynga = play.
And lastly, David gave us, in my opinion, one critical piece of wisdom that likely goes for granted: every year, ask yourself (regarding your job), are you having fun? Are you learning? Are you making a meaningful impact on the world? If you’re not, maybe it’s time for a change.
