Pitching a VC – Dealing with Competition

Competition

This is the slide that most presenters handle very easily so I won’t
spend too much time on it.  For the first-timers I’d like to tell you
the two most common approaches that I see and for everybody else I’d
also like to add a section on the common pitfalls – even for
experienced presenters.

1. Harvey Balls

One
of the most common ways to present the competition slide is to show
your company stacked against your main competitors, who will be plotted
in vertical columns against each other.  On the horizontal rows you
will plot a set of features or key attributes of how you define your
competitive differentiation.  This is not only a way to talk about you
versus your competition but a chance to reinforce two things: 1) what
you see as the most important buying criteria for your customers and 2)
how you believe your firm differentiates.

Harvey Balls look something like
the graph I’ve attached here.  Try your best not to make this a
small-minded feature comparison in which you come out on top in each
category.  The best way to do it in my opinion is to really have this
form the basis of your company strategy.  Think back to the slides in
the VC deck where you define the customer problem you’re solving and what your solution does.  The Harvey Ball slide should in a way just be a depiction of this strategy.

Literally 90+% of Harvey Ball slides that I see presented to me have
the presenting company with all the balls fully filled out and some
weaknesses in your competitors. Why not take this opportunity to
differentiate yourself in the VC presentation?  Why not say, “look, I
know most people just show themselves with all the benefits and
competitors with all the weaknesses, but here is a realistic view of
where we’re at today” and show some weaknesses.  It will be a great
chance to build rapport with the investor.

You will be able to say why you’ve chosen to be strong in certain
areas – these being the ones you believe your target customers care
about the most – and how you will develop other features to match
competition in the future.  It is a great place to talk about your
future roadmap.  It is also a great place to emphasize that you think
it is important not to just replicate every feature of your competitors
but to build your product in a cost-effective way and building to the
MVP (minimum viable product).  I think the pro’s of showing a VC that
you understand how to be customer and cost focused far outweighs the
“were better at everything approach”.

If you can’t resist the temptation to be the best at every category
the VC will forgive you and it is the one place I think you can get
away with it (even if I don’t recommend it).  It’s the lie we know
you’re telling (along with your hockey stick growth that we sort of
accept for some reason.

2. Two-by-two matrix

The alternative to (or in addition to) Harvey Balls is the 2×2
matrix – the ones so popularized by The Gartner Group (and every
consultancy out there).  This is the one where you plot yourself on a
2×2 graph along vertical and horizontal dimensions in which you define
what the measurements are.  Often they are things like: functionally
complete product, platform coverage, price, intuitive UI, geographic
coverage or some other way of slicing the competition.

Here I would say 100% of presentations I see have YourCo as the
leading player usually position in the upper right quadrant.  Again,
that’s as per my comments on Harvey Balls it is probably OK since for
some reason, maybe tradition, we just accept that you’re going to say
this and you get a free pass.  But even if you’re the best on your
slide use this as an opportunity to really talk openly about what you
believe customers want and why you believe your positioning will help
you succeed in the long run.

3. Pitfalls

“We have no real competition”

I hate when I hear companies say this.  In some rare circumstances
it is conceivable that this is true but it is very seldom.  The first
thoughts many VCs have when you say this (and many novices do say this)
is that “if there’s no competition maybe it’s because there’s no real
market?” or the variant, “if there’s no real competition it is going to
take way too long to educate the market and adoption will be slow –
yuck.”  But the most common thing they’re probably thinking is, “of
course there’s competition – you’re just either naïve I thinking
there’s not or you’re not being direct with me.  Either of these is a
problem.”

Why do we want to know your competitors?  Aside from the reasons
mentioned above (with no competition there is either no market or long
time to educate the market), we also want to know because if we get
serious about evaluating your company we really want to understand the
industry you’re competing in, which means researching the competition. 
We also want to hear how you think about your competitors and your
market and how you will respond to the inevitable changes by your
competitors.  And frankly we want to know that you spend some time
thinking about the competition and how you’ll differentiate.

But what would you do if you actually had no competitors?  In that
rare case you’d need to talk about the substitute products that exist
in the market or how customer are solving the problem you’re addressing
with work-around solutions today.  You can talk about your biggest
problem being inertia (as it often is in sales) and how you’re going to
solve that problem.  Even better – just find some competitor to compare
yourself to – it will make life far easier.

“Our competition sucks”

So I know that no company pitching us actually says it this harshly
but the disdain for your competitor is often felt in the word choices
and how you position them.  Having grown up in the US, I was used to
this kind of “slash-and-burn” competitive positioning when talking to
VCs, the press and even customers.  This is the style of Larry Ellison,
Steve Jobs or Marc Benioff.

But I lived in the UK for nearly a decade and learned a lot from
them in being gracious to competition.  It is simply “not the done
thing” to be brash about competition as US companies would be and I
find this to be a better way to position yourselves.  Even though we
tolerate these kinds of attacks in our society (think politics) – the
people who seem to stay above it all I believe garner a better
impression of themselves.

So I recommend pointing out the positive things your competitors do
and giving an honest sense of where you differentiate (e.g. not a
falsely positive comment about the competition but a true one).  “Our
competitor has been in the market for 6 years, which clearly gives them
an advantage in terms of features and a large installed base.  Where we
hope to continue to differentiate with customers is in the simplicity
of our design.  Because our product wasn’t built 6 years ago we were
able to take advantage of many of the Ajax-based toolsets that are
newer on the market and thus have a more intuitive design.  Had we been
around 6 years ago we would have built more of a legacy system and, of
course, once you have a large installed base it’s much harder to change
your product.”

Next up: Customer Adoption or “Traction”.

(Cross-posted @ Both Sides of the Table)