What do investors want? A common topic for blogs, entrepreneurs, and investors. So here’s a view on it, from somebody who knows:

1.  What Do Investors Want in a Startup?

Naval Ravikant, speaker

Naval Ravikant, the speaker, has been through the ringer a few times, on both sides of the investment table. I watched one of his ventures, epinions.com, very closely, because my daughter and son in law were employees. So now, a few years later, I follow his Venture Hacks blog.

Most of what he says here is pretty standard. And if you’re interested, his fellow blogger transcribed this interview on venture hacks. Some highlights:

“I look for two things that are paramount above all:

1. Great team. It’s obvious. It’s a tautology. Everybody says it. You have to be working with some of the best people in the industry you’re in.
2. Huge market. Niche markets just don’t work because the first idea never works. You always have to change the idea, so you need room to maneuver in a big market.

“There are three more factors that I look at. Not all three of them are required but I prefer a company to have at least two of them:

1. Difficult technology that is compounding over time.
2. A proprietary distribution channel. A clever viral marketing, or SEO, or partnership, or whatever strategy that gives them a leg up over competitors.
3. A direct monetization model. Something more than throwing up 10 cent banner ad CPMs.

Naval has more authority on this than I do, but his reference to niche markets bothers me a bit. I like niche markets in a world that is constantly splintering and dividing itself finer and finer. Some of the biggest markets there are started as niches: Facebook, for example, focused first on a few university campuses. Yahoo was a niche — the Internet — when it started. Starbucks was once a niche (gourmet coffee, affordable luxury) in the Northwest.

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2. 10 Top Things for Pitching VCs

David Rose, speaker

This is a web-embedded video from an entrepreneur who is also an investor, talking about what investors want to know, and what they want to see in a pitch.

If for whatever reason you don’t see the video here, you can click this link to go to the source video on the TED site.

Guy Kawasaki –  The Art of the Start

About a year after his book, The Art of the Start, was published (and after a lot of previous engagements speaking on it), Guy Kawasaki chose this video as the one to post on the web. It’s a very good live and in-person presentation of most of the same content as in the book.

Tim Berry — Three Types of Startups

This is a five-minute video interview with Tim Berry, business-planning expert, talking about the 3 types of startups on the SBTV site.

Nice summary, an excerpt of a book on business structure.

Watch Kanwal Rekhi’s Lecture at Michigan Technological University « I.P. in the U.P.: “”

Entrepreneurship in Hard Times from Engineering Michigan on Vimeo.

Guy Kawasaki’s latest book, Reality Check,is a very good convenient desktop reference (in a way) to some good common sense advice on many aspects of startups, small business, and work in the cubicle world.

I called it What Biz School Can’t Teach when I reviewed it on my main blog. And below, from BNET, is a video of Guy talking about it.

If, for any reason, you don’t see the video on this page (there are technical reasons, having to do with your system, your bandwidth, add-ons and such), you can probably find the video directly on the source site, using this link.

Nice summary, an excerpt of a book on business structure.

• Kawasaki, Chapter 10, The Art of Rainmaking.
• Kawasaki, Chapter 11, the Art of Being a Mensch.

I’ve created a minimum business plan file that you can use as a starting point with Business Plan Pro so that you have an easier and quicker way to work through what I’m calling the minimum business plan for this class.

Step-by-step

1. You can use this link to purchase Business Plan Pro direct from Palo Alto Software. Or call the tollfree number at (800) 229-7526, or the local number at 541-683-6162, and ask for sales. Tell the salesperson you are using this for a class, and need academic pricing. There is no Macintosh version, but I use it on my Mac all the time, in Parallels.
2. Install Business Plan Pro. Notice the video tutorials, and the extensive help, and the technical support available for free by email or telephone. Please don’t ask me to do tech support for the software.
3. You can use this link to get the file. It’s also on the downloads page on this site. How you actually download depends on which browser you use. For example, in Internet Explorer you right-click the mouse and use the "save target as" option to download a file. Get the file downloaded and saved on yur disk.
4. Open this minimum business plan file from within Business Plan Pro.
5. VERY IMPORTANT: use the Save-As command to save the file with a different name. You don’t want to work with the original, because then you can never start over; and you’ll run the risk of having a classmate using the same name.
6. VERY IMPORTANT: Don’t use the tasks view to go step-by-step. Use the outline view, not the tasks view, to show your files.
7. VERY IMPORTANT: Use the plan setup to make sure you’re set for the standard plan: not the simple, and not the more detailed. If you don’t, then the wrong outline points show up.

Here’s what you should be looking at … maybe not exactly, depending on where you are, but it should look something like this, with instructions showing on the upper left, an action window in the lower left (for text or tables), and the outline in the right (you an click on the picture for a larger view).