The Top Challenges CEOs Face when Pitching Investors

As a CEO, you have two roles: You need to get the right people on the bus and also find a way to pay them/retain them. It sounds pretty simple, but as many of you may be well aware, it can be quite difficult.

In addition to those first two roles, if your company also needs growth capital, then your most important job as the CEO/entrepreneur is fundraising. Why is this? Fundraising is the only job that can’t be outsourced to someone else. At the same time, as the CEO, you have the highest opportunity cost of time of anyone in the company, and time you waste unsuccessfully fundraising takes away from time you could be spending building your business.

Many entrepreneurs often find themselves stuck in this catch-22. That’s where Pitch Creator comes in — our Business Pitch Blueprint can help you effectively and efficiently navigate investor pitching, so you can raise money and get back to building your business.

• Transcript

  So, if you think about it as a CEO or entrepreneur, you have two main jobs. Getting the right people on the bus from the book, Good to Great, meaning, how do you get the right people in the right seats? Right? And you’ve got to be able to pay those people to retain them. You do attract them and retain them. That sounds really easy. I can say it that way. We all know if you’re an entrepreneur, it’s actually not that easy. But, if you need to raise growth capital, there’s two more important realizations that you need to make that not everyone realizes.

  The first realization is if your company needs, absolutely need growth capital, then the most important job as the CEO entrepreneur is not fundraising. And the reason is it is the one job that you absolutely cannot outsource to someone else. It’s got to be done by you. Hiring and training people can be outsourced. Sales can be outsourced. Pretty much every other function, if it actually has to be, you have the money, can be outsourced except this one.

  And then the second realization is if you’re the CEO, you have the highest opportunity cost of time of anyone in the company. So while you’re raising capital, that’s time you could be spending recruiting your team, building your product, marketing, sales, distribution, and all those other things. It’s also time that competitors are catching up with you.