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I'm curious to here feedback on whether people think it's a good idea to share your slide deck after giving your pitch/presentation to a potential investor. We just did a pitch...and had an investor who was very interested but asked us to send him our slide deck. Our concern, of course, is that he could take the deck and re-pitch it himself, or use to share with people we don't know. Any protocol on what you should/shouldn't share with a potential investor? |
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There has been some great discussions about protecting ideas, but the long and the short of it is no one wants to steal your idea. A slide deck is a step up from a "napkin idea" at a bar, but not much. It's just an idea with some made up numbers, graphs, and pretty pictures. There are many more ideas out there than there are people to execute them and money to fund them. You should only hope that your investor will share your deck with other people; if it's truly a good idea, then they'll tell him to give you his money. |
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You should share your deck with a potential investor that asks for it. Many investors will want to show it to their advisors for help in assessing the opportunity or refer to it later as they do their own research on the market. This is normal. No serious investor worth his salt will even think about stealing your idea, for two reasons. First, if word got out, they would never be pitched again, ending their investing career. Second, they understand that ideas are cheap - execution is what's hard. What you really need to be worried about is your presentation falling into the hands of one of your competitors. Investors that are looking at pitches look at a lot of pitches, and they (or someone in their office) may know someone trying to do a similar idea. To discourage this, I recommend two things:
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If you believe that your idea is valuable-enough to warrant protection, get them to sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA). |
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There's a great blog post on this topic here, covering protocol, the value of your deck, and how the dynamic leadership you bring should trump the static information in your deck. http://steveblank.com/2009/12/07/someone-stole-my-startup-idea-–-part-2-they-raised-money-with-my-slides/ |
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If you've shown a deck, you've already shared it. Why wouldn't you want to make it easy for your prospective investor to review what you pitched? And if it's a good pitch, your deck will make clear not just what your idea is, but why you have the insight, the passion, the commitment, the capability and the energy to follow through. The deck is selling you (with your idea), not your idea (with or without you). All startups face the risk of someone else executing on their idea. In fact, most startups will find pretty fast, not that someone has stolen their idea, but that someone else has independently come up with the same, or perhaps a better variant, of their idea. Get over it. Focus on how you are going to execute, not on who else might try. |
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