Once you’re on a call with a potential investor, you want to be sure that your story is to the point. You don’t want to practice on investors. You want them to understand you. Come prepared.

It's better to practice with peers and to ensure real people understand your story.

From what we’ve learned while speaking to investors, founders rarely deliver their story in a concise way from the first take.

We’ve also learned from seasoned founders that it takes a lot of time to perfect the pitch.

Practice on our platform 2 to 3 times, and listen to others in order to understand how investors perceive pitches.

We expect that you're coming to us having built a proper pitch deck.

Please read these articles from Y Combinator. They are very useful:

• How to Build Your Seed Round Pitch Deck
• How to Design a Better Pitch Deck

It makes perfect sense to talk to strangers and see how or if they understand your story.

Investors come from different backgrounds.

You want to be able to talk about your project with people from different backgrounds and make sure they understand your idea or story.

On Presentum you book people who told us when they're available.

Each session is 45 minutes and ends automatically when the time is up.

We recommend that you aim to tell your story in under 15 minutes.

If your listener is ready for a discussion, to ask questions or to give verbal feedback, use the remaining time to have a meaningful conversation.

At the end of each session, we ask listeners to answer relevant questions.

We framed these questions so that listeners can tell you how they understood your story.

They don’t have to be correct — you will benefit from comparing what you wanted to communicate to what they’ve heard and by fixing your pitch so these two sides coincide.

Questions:

• What problem does this startup solve?
• What kind of traction do they have? Describe how people use the product.
• Do they have any revenue or other meaningful metrics?
• What is their business model? How (would) they earn money?
• Describe how they are planning to grow.
• How would you describe their team?
• How much are they raising and why?

It is crucial for you to listen to 3 to 5 pitches at least:

• You'll understand how investors feel when a pitch is too boring, too long, or subpar.
• You'll be armed with more ideas about how to adjust your pitch.
• You'll help fellow founders to improve their pitches.

Presentum matches founders based on their profile and availability.

Please make sure you let other founders book you in. Provide your availability using the time slots in Settings.

Once someone books a time slot, you will receive an invite via email.

You don’t have to accept all invites, just those you can actually attend.