3 Parts to an Investable Vision

This week’s tip: The 3 parts to create an influential vision

Your vision is the 1st thing an investor sees.

If you fail to make them believe in it, its over.

It shows:

• Your ambition
• Your impact in solving a specific problem
• Your novel ideas of how you see the the future

More importantly, investors make their $$$ when you exit (hopefully this is obvious!).

So whilst its important to understand where you are right now.

An investor has to truly believe that your vision is worthwhile for them.

This is why your vision plays such an important role.

And if you fail to influence them, will cause them to reject you instantly.

Your vision also decides the types of conversations you have.

If you fail, it becomes negative and your conversations will be about your risks. 9 times out of 10 an investor will decline you.

If you succeed, it becomes about opportunities and a conversation about how both of you will do it. This is where an investment happens!

So…

You have to make your vision show an investor what the future will look like and how they will play a part in it.

Here are the 3 main parts to have an influential vision:

1: Your vision is BIG

One of the biggest mistakes I’ve seen founders make is only telling a reasonable story about their startup.

It’s rational, it’s manageable, it’s doable.

And I get why you do - you need to execute!

But your story will miss the bigness that breathes unreasonable energy and momentum into a project.

Investors want to be able to say they invested into that BIG company that solved a lofty goal.

Investors, employees, journalists, and anybody who is listening to your narrative wants excitement. They want to believe. They want to be part of something that matters.

And whether you build something small or something big, it will take 100% of your time. So go for something big. Tell that big story.

2: Your vision seems INEVITABLE

Investors care a lot about timing when it comes to start-ups.

They are grasping for a vision that seems inevitable as this is a big precursor for if a company will succeed at what they are doing.

Your vision has to answer why at this exact point in time is it right for your business to succeed.

The best way to do this:

You should start your story from a position of shared facts. You need to get the investor nodding along.

You can then build a fact pattern for your vision that deviates from the baseline.

Back up the most contentious parts with data that contradicts the common cynical critiques of your vision. Evidence makes it hard to argue theory. Keep them nodding.

After establishing an inevitable market narrative, you must make clear how your solution is the logical next step on this particular arc of history.

The story needs to shift from agreement on how the market will evolve to why you’re the one that will make it happen.

To summarize, your pitch will seem inevitable if you can:

• Frame a narrative that makes a market shift feel inevitable
• Produce data to support the counter-intuitive part of your thesis
• Demonstrate that you're the person destined to make that change happen.

3: Your vision is UNCONTROVERSIAL

There has to be a certainty that your vision is possible.

If you say you are going to be able to land on Venus in 10 years no-one will believe you.

But if you say you will start the human journey to being inter-planetary? That is more certain.

A big part of doing this, is your own tone and mindset when speaking about your vision.

You have to have complete confidence in how you speak that it will be completed.

Whether that is trends, the biggest problems your customer is facing, your exceptional team, the massive market.

Show that your success is obvious. Don’t just tell.

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These are the three main parts to an influential vision.

If you have all three most investor’s will get excited by what you are doing.

The biggest problem I have seen with founders when discussing their vision is 2 things:

• Too much focus on WHAT their company does, rather than why, how and the benefit of it
• Making their vision too complex

Your goal is to make a simple, objective vision that influences investors to want to join you in making that vision a reality.

That’s the end goal.