I did my first practice pitch to relatives this past week. I had my colorful pitch deck of 13 slides ready to go and presented them. Most importantly, the slides did their job in presenting:
- The problem it solved
- How it solved it
- How it was monetized
- How it would be taken to market
- The target user
- Timeline to release
- Cost of bringing the app to market
The above was conveyed clearly and the information landed the way I intended. I’d also discovered after the practice pitch that there was large missing piece if I am going to take this to venture capital (my end goal) to have them invest $1M – $1.5M to bring it to life. What I was going to need in addition to my pretty slides was an MVP — Minimum Viable Product.
This is basically a functional prototype of the app. Built and running in Apple Developer’s TestFlight to allow someone to launch it and run a minimalist version of the app. This shows potential VC investors proof of execution (yes the app can be built) and give a feeling of how engaging it is.
How long is this going to take? I have no idea. I’ve never done it before. There’s the possibility of using AI tools like Cursor to help build it. I get the sense it’s going to take awhile, as there’s going to be a lot of debugging and back and forth to build out a testable version of the app. Hopefully it’ll allow me to speak more about the coding side of things during the VC pitch and allow me to answer questions that come up.
It may also shorten the roadmap as the app post-VC-funding could build off the TestFlight version.
So next up: Register some trademarks and get coding!
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