So, you’ve got a great idea for an app – all you need is a way to fund your app idea. It can seem daunting trying to come up with money out of thin air, but this is why you’ve got to get an investor. Indie developers thrive in app stores – that’s the truth. You don’t need a huge company behind you to help you bring your ideas to fruition; all you need is a few mobile app investors. An excellent idea is absolutely worth investing in, and investors help you develop your mobile app faster, pay for marketing to make sure your app gets in front of people who will use it and helps you actually pay your employees if you haven’t yet monetized.
How do you find an investor for your idea? Here are some tips to help you land even the most weary mobile app investors.
Know Your Niche
In order for someone to invest in your app, they’re going to need to know if there’s a need. This requires a little research on your end. Say you have a have a great idea for an app where people send 6 second videos that can only be viewed once before they disappear. A quick Google search will tell you that that’s already Snapchat. No one’s going to invest in an app that isn’t unique, so research your market and figure out if there is a need and why. You’ll need to showcase this in your elevator pitch, which I’ll discuss later.
Brand Your App
Strong branding just looks professional. It’s so much easier to pitch a finished product to potential investors than it is to pitch a vague idea. Show investors you’ve got everything in place by having strong app branding. Get an actual domain name, mockup your website and show a mockup of what your app will look like. A crazy app idea is great, but the only way people know you’re serious is if you put in every extra effort. You can also hire a consultant to develop a targeted content marketing campaign to raise awareness for your app.
Develop A Great Elevator Pitch
You have a very limited amount of time to explain your idea to potential investors – they’re busy people, after all. This is why you need an excellent elevator pitch. An elevator pitch is how you’d describe your app to someone if you only had a short elevator ride to speak to them. Once they’re interested, you can expand the conversation, but you need to pull them in right off the bat.
Figure Out What Kind Of Funding You Need
You may not know the first thing about raising money, but if you’re asking people to invest in you, you should probably learn. Did you know there are specific investment stages? You need to know just what kind of capitol you’re looking for. Of course, if you’re just starting out, you’ll be running a seed or pre-seed stage of investing. This means you don’t have any revenue yet and probably don’t even have a fully built app. Set your expectations in reality for the type of money you expect. No one is going to invest $10 million in a random idea that has no proven form of revenue. In the case of a pre-seed round, you’re probably going to be asking investors for $200,000. If you’re lucky, maybe you can top $1 million, but don’t push your luck.
Target The Appropriate Investors
Now that you’ve got through the basics, you’re going to need to actually find people who may be interested in investing. You may to turn to friends and family first or an individual angel investor. Beyond that, you need to make sure you target people interested in mobile apps and seed stage investing – which can be a really risky business. There are plenty of early-stage venture capital funds like First Round Capital or True Ventures who may be interested in your idea.
Finding someone’s contact is tricky. Make every effort to get someone to make the introduction for you.
Create A Pitch Deck
The most important thing beyond your initial elevator pitch is your pitch deck. This describes your idea and your startup to people who may give you money. Your pitch deck should be around 10 slides and take under 20 minutes. Include slides about your vision and the value of your work. Include information about why you feel like there’s a hole in the market your app will fill. Explain your target market and how you’ll use the money invested. Most importantly, show investors you have ideas for a potential revenue model. Show them your timeline and what you need to make that revenue model happen. You can also talk about your marketing and sales strategy and introduce your team. Your project is unique – use this as a chance to show investors who you actually are. Need inspiration? Checkout this list of 9 Best Startup Pitch Decks Of All Time.
Consider Creating an App Demo
Want to really impress your potential investors? Work on an app demo so they don’t just listen to your idea, but they can physically see what they’re getting. This is a risk if you don’t put enough time into development, so make sure you hire a great developer to make your mockup. DevTeamSpace mobile product experts can make a demo of your idea. You can also opt for a flat mockup. A designer should be able to create this for you in Photoshop. It provides a good value, but has less of a wow factor.
Practice Your Pitch
Public speaking and pitching ideas is nerve-wracking. This is why you’ve got to practice, practice, practice. Put together your talk and give your presentation to friends and family. Take feedback and learn what you can fix. Anticipate questions your potential investors may have and practice giving the answers. You don’t want to be stumped in the pitch room.
Conclusion
It’s often the make or break of a company. I’ve personally worked for startups that have failed because they couldn’t find funding; I’ve also worked for startups that became so successful because of their funding they ended up being bought out by major companies. For every failure, there is a success story. Make sure your pitch to investors is as tightly wound and as impressive as possible. Keep pushing along if you hear a no, because eventually, you will hear a yes.
FinSMEs
21/06/2017