Sploops – Paul Rosa
Sploops – Sean Roth
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About the Episode
You will hear the story of how these two entrepreneurs almost ran out of money and the clever strategy they used to save it and raise over $100K. Also, rather than asking them for tips on how to pitch, I asked one of them to actually pitch us so we can learn from a real example.
Paul Rosa and Sean Roth are the Co-Founders of Sploops.
Show Notes
Running Out of Money and their Clever Strategy to Raise Over $100K
In the middle of 2014, Sean and Paul were down to their last $136.00. They were a year out of college and they were simply lost on what they’ll do at that point. They kept their app alive as much as they could,saving whatever money they can spare at that time. The game changer was when they reached out to their university where they talked to their alumnito help them get some potential alumni investors. The group then did a small Shark Tank scenario for Sean and Paul where they brought 3 potential investors over for them to present their deck to. It was their first investor presentation ever and even if they already had a working website version with about 150 users to test the market and rehearsed very well, they felt they were so unprepared for it. One of the investor turned out to be interested and they were able to get follow up meetings with him until they closed the deal with $115k funding.
Two Big Things in Pitching to Investors
The two big things in pitching are preparation and personality. You can never prepare enough for a presentation so never settle for anything. Keep evolving your deck to become better as it will save you lots of efforts in the end. Second in the list mentioned is not to be uptight and just let your personality show. Show them what you are all about because investors are, most of the time, investing in people and not necessarily in the product. If you have a good product but lack the right people to drive it, it could easily fail. You should have the motivation, creativity and resilience.
Show Mentions
– Sean’s fav app: DraftKings: (iTunes)
– Paul’s fav app: Snapchat: (iTunes | Google Play)