Your leadership team is crucial to the success of your business. One aspect I’d point out in particular is achieving funding.
The success of a pitch to an investor can literally come down to the quality of your leadership team. By quality I mean knowledge, experience and skills that should cover the breadth of all aspects of your business.
The investors will naturally want to feel assured that their money is in safe hands and there is no better way to do this than through a strong leadership team.
In this article I will lay out what you need in your leadership team and why it is so important when looking to raise more money.
You need someone with a plan for the future. Some describe this person as the ‘visionary’ which sounds relatively grand but, essentially, it’s someone who’s been with the business the whole time, usually the founder, who has a strategy for where the business is heading.
This person should balance being ambitious with realistic and be able to effectively communicate their vision to the rest of the leadership team and also investors.
The next person you should have in your leadership team is someone who has grown a business before. Having someone who has gone through the whole process previously allows you as a business to strategise with foresight of what may be coming next.
Also, investors want to know that your business strategy isn’t just throwing darts in the dark but it’s been developed by people that know what to expect and have had success before.
As I’ve said in previous articles, the pitch is essentially trying to ease any concerns investors have about the risk of your business and having someone with experience in growing a business will go a long way to do that.
You also need someone who has successfully exited a business before. This may sound a bit backwards for when you’re preparing an investment pitch but investors will want to know that you have a plan for exit.
This is because their money and return on that money depends entirely on the success of your eventual exit. Having someone with experience in this area will reassure investors.
These don’t need to be three separate people, in fact it’s common that it isn’t, but it is important to have all of these areas covered within your leadership team.
When putting together your investment pitch, you as a leadership team might decide you need to bring in some external help. This can be a great decision as you only have one attempt at a pitch and you need to get it right.
It’s common to bring in an accountant during your preparation. Your financials are a crucial part of your pitch that investors will want to scrutinise. If your numbers don’t add up or it looks like you’ve gone wrong somewhere, this can instantly sink your pitch.
Having an accountant come in makes practical sense as you can rest assured that your financials are steady and you can progress forward with the development of your pitch.
Likewise, another expert that can prove useful is to bring a lawyer on board. This is because unsurprisingly pitches, negotiations and the transactions of investment can heavily involve legal proceedings.
It’s a good idea to have a lawyer at your side to make sure you’re doing everything legally, there aren’t any mistakes and that you’re not being scammed.
Some final people it’s worth considering to complement your leadership are a chairperson and a Non Executive Director.
The aim of your pitch is to convince the investor that you are a well run and organised business. Having a chairperson with strong communication skills can help show this. This chairperson could lead the communications with the investors. This isn’t imperative but worth a discussion.
A Non Executive Director again isn’t a must but the advantages of having one are a) their skills and experience will be useful in running the business and preparing for your pitch and b) having their backing will likely impress the investors.
Impress the investors. That’s your mission. There’s no better way of doing that then having impressive people in your leadership team who are knowledgeable, experienced and skilled.
Essentially, it’s the people that will win you the money so make sure you have the right people in your leadership team.
