Sheila Marcelo's Blog

Presenting to Investors

A few people have asked me recently about the appropriate format for a business plan when presenting to an investor, especially a venture capital firm. My advice is to avoid long Word documents in book form. I would develop a 15-20 page PowerPoint deck and leave it at that. In my brief stint at Matrix Partners and in meeting with other companies introduced to me by other venture capital firms, I learned that investors tend to go through many company presentations and they prefer brevity. Any questions they may have will be raised naturally in the conversation. And if you can communicate what your business is about in very few slides, then your business will often be perceived as clear and simple to understand.

The outline I'd use would include the following:

• Overview
• Team
• Value Proposition
• Market
• Business Model & Comps
• Target Market
• Competition
• Product Roadmap
• Marketing Plan
• Financial Plan - Format is basic P&L (revenue and big bucket operational expenses) with Operations Metrics (will vary by business)
• Financing

Hope that helps.

Cheers,

Sheila

Women and the Web

Last week, I was out in San Francisco interviewing with Charlene Li, a principal analyst with Forrester Research, about my newest endeavor: Care.com. Charlene is an expert on social computing (blogs, RSS, podcasting, and social networking), and is currently co-authoring a book with another Forrester analyst, Josh Bernoff, to be published sometime next year. She examines the ways in which new technology will affect how companies communicate with consumers, so you can imagine how excited I was to get her feedback on my new online service!

I met Charlene years ago when she was based in Forrester's Cambridge offices. A mutual friend introduced us, since we were both women in high tech, with kids, and we both went to the same B-school. It was nice to catch up with Charlene after all this time. She told me about a site called BlogHer and suggested that I go check it out. BlogHer.org is a website that brings together women bloggers from all across the Internet--and across a wide range of topics--to "pursue exposure, education, and community. I highly recommend this organization to any female Internet entrepreneur, and encourage you to attend their conference in Chicago, held at the end of July this year. I know I’ll definitely be there. So, thanks for the recommendation, Charlene!

Charlene also told me that I’m the 10^th female CEO she’s met in her career at Forrester. This gives me even more reason to ensure that Care.com is successful (a mission to help women find a life more balanced by providing them with simple, easy access to child care, elder care, pet care, tutoring and all sorts of other services to help solve their ever changing care needs) and to write this blog. I want to see more female entrepreneurs succeed, especially in the Web 2.0 space. Over the next few weeks I’ll be interviewing some incredible women whose success stories are an inspiration, so check back often!

Cheers,
Sheila