[MUSIC] We now have an overview of all the sources of funding for a startup. Of course, the next question is, how do you get access? What you will learn in the next module, it says how to prepare your presentation. The perspective of the investor, and practical tips on your way to funding. The main part, though, will be on how to prepare your presentation. Because although some people may think it is sort of magical how you attract funding, it really is not. If you really do the work, if you really can show that there's a potential market, if you can show that there's a repeatable and a scalable business model. If you show all those things are there, potentially, of course there's still risk involved and so on. But if you can show it's there, it's not that hard to get an investor on board. Really not. So it's more about the work than about the presentation. Although, from people like Steve Jobs, people say he has this sort of magical charisma that will make it all happen. Well, this is not how it works. Steve Jobs with a bad idea would not get funded in Silicon Valley, even though he did have a lot of charisma. Now maybe you've seen this TV series, it's called Silicon Valley. It's HBO, its season three is coming up, I think. And it's incredibly funny. It's about a startup called Pied Piper, and it's five guys in a garage trying to do the typical Silicon Valley myth. And the myth is that you don't talk to customers, you just do brilliant things and then the rest sort of happens. And well, I strongly suggest you watch this series and then you get a sense of what not to do. Because well, they're not doing such a good job. Now, there used to be a time when people would write business plans for startups. And writing a business plan in a large corporation is not that strange. Because, well, you have a known business model, so you can sort of figure out, if you do something new but it fits the old model, you have a sense of what will happen. Problem in a startup, of course, is there's so much uncertainty that it doesn't make much sense to make a five-year plan. And it also doesn't make much sense to make it 40, 50 pages with all kind of details, prognosis, because there's just so much you don't know. So what has changed is that, nowadays, business plans are more presentations. And we're going to use the presentations format from a company called Sequoia Capital. And Sequoia Capital is the world's most successful venture capital firm, by any standard. About 25% of the total value of Nasdaq, the stock exchange in New York, is from companies that were founded and funded through Sequoia Capital. So that is a pretty big deal. And on their website, if you go to their website, you can see a format. You can find a format on what they want from startups to present to them so they can decide whether they will fund you or not. So they funded Google, they funded Apple, they funded Oracle, they funded YouTube. It's a really [LAUGH] long, incredible list of startups that were funded through Sequoia Capital. So simple thinking, if it's good enough for the best venture capital firm in the world, it's probably good enough for all the other people before you get to venture capital. For all, whether it's crowdfunding, whether it's angels, whether it's government, if you can show the ten things that Sequoia Capital wants from you, it's going to be good enough, right? And if you are in a meeting with someone who thinks it's not, well, then you probably should question if that person is actually the person you want to be funded by. This is the Sequoia deck, it's ten elements. Company purpose, problem, solution, the why now question, the one I love, market size, competition, product, business model, team, and financials.
