By Gregory Mannix, Chief Conference Officer, Vice President International Business Development, LSN
Partnering for Digital RESI June is up and running, and you have your company and personal profiles refined, updated and uploaded to the platform. You are diligently identifying the investors who are the best fit for your technology and stage of development and have begun to request a lot of meetings with the 400 investors and strategic partners who will be participating. You will soon start to get the first confirmations of meetings and you will be following up and sending out new requests over the next 3 weeks to get as many meetings booked as possible for June 8th-10th.
Now you need to start preparing for those important meetings. Begin to prepare your meetings early to be as ready as possible when RESI begins. Your goal is to make enough of an impression in that 30-minute meeting on each of your potential investors that you get a commitment to have a next meeting. Here are some tips on how to make the most out of those crucial 30 minutes:
1. Research the Investor Firm
Try to understand the investment firm with whom you are meeting. Typically, there is a lot of information on the firm’s website about their mission and philosophy, as well as their portfolio of companies in which they have invested. This information is key to understanding how your company might fit in. Take notes of the reasons you see a potential to work together that you can bring up during the meeting.
2. Research the person you are meeting with
You will know in advance who you are meeting with from each of the investor firms. Be sure to learn all you can about the person you will be meeting with. One important thing to discover is the background and experience of your meeting counterpart. If you see that they happen to have a deep background in your particular area of technology, you might focus your pitch differently than if they have a background in finance and business.
3. Prepare your elevator pitch
For a 30-minute meeting, it is crucial to get the investor’s attention and interest in a concise, clear pitch that highlights all of the key elements of your company, without going into deep and lengthy technical descriptions that will eat up your time. Focus on what is important and differentiates your technology or team. Let the conversation flow naturally. Engaging the investor in a discussion rather than running through your slides will often help retain investor interest.
4. Have back-up slides on hand
That doesn’t mean you are not prepared to go into more detail if you are asked a specific question. Have your slides prepared that you can easily access in case you need to explain your asset’s mechanism of action in more detail or your data achieved to date that you may have summarized in your initial pitch. You can never have too many backup slides to address questions that might come up during your meeting.
5. Bring a second attendee to meetings
You will be very focused on making your pitch and answering any questions that come up, so you likely will not be taking notes during the meeting. If you are having back-to-back meetings, it will be extremely challenging to remember all of the comments and questions from investors during each of your meetings, but that information is really important for your follow up. Having a colleague on hand to take good notes at the meetings is a really good way to be sure you don’t miss anything.
6. Prepare a binder with your notes for each meeting
You will hopefully be needing your laptop for multiple meetings during RESI, some of them back-to-back, so I highly recommend having a paper back-up of your pre-meeting notes on each of your meetings that you can quickly reference between meetings. A binder with your pre-prepared notes and space to take notes during the meeting will be very useful.
7. Have questions prepared in advance
Most of your meeting with a new potential investor will be about presenting your company and yourself, and answering questions from your investor counterpart, but you shouldn’t miss out on the opportunity to ask questions that you may have from your pre-meeting research. Questions can be about what role the investor will play in your company if they decide to make an investment—such as, do they take a seat on the Board—or if they typically want to be the lead investor or part of a syndicate. Another thing that is always good to know is how any investor can add value to your company if they invest in you; what experience, expertise or connections do they have in your field that can help you in the future?
Best of luck to you all at Digital RESI June. It is such an exciting opportunity for you to make meaningful connections that will drive your success.
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Our 3-day Digital RESI June Conference is coming up in less than 3 weeks, and we are very excited to announce our Innovation Challenge finalists. With a diverse representation across therapeutics, medical devices, diagnostics, and digital health, these companies were selected on the basis of innovative technology, strong management team, clear pathway to commercialization, and other positive factors that demonstrated high growth potential.
