If you’re not getting VC attention check your value proposition.

“I can say this with certainty: as an investor, a startup’s value proposition is the first place I look,” said Zain Jaffer, Founder and CEO, Zain Ventures. “It’s important that a new company spends a lot of time developing their value proposition. That first value proposition will determine their positioning with their investors and help us understand their ultimate aim. As a word of advice to new founders coming to market: you can’t spend too much time on your value proposition, and you don’t have much time to waste.”

Andy is part of a lovely fantastic founder who had been banging their head against the doors of the VC community for months. They knew that they had a great idea. They'd validated it, done their homework, so why were they just being ignored? Shouldn't the VCs be biting at their fingertips to get a hold of this?  Sound familiar? 

You can fix this by discovering your attention seeking superpower - your value proposition!

The numbers work against you getting attention. 

A typical VC will receive thousands of pitches and hear 500 in a year, and only 10% of startups make it past the first meeting. (Business Insider).

The challenge as a founder is balancing persistence, timing, commitment and rejection and accidentally falling into the trap of becoming a walking definition of insanity by doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.  It's really healthy to have another look at what you're doing and ensure you’ve got your must-haves in place.

There are lots of articles that share with you all the different reasons why a VC might say no or not respond, and there are two things those articles almost all have in common as must-haves:

1.) a Unique Value Proposition (UVP) that demonstrates that you understand the problem, the customer and why you are uniquely placed to solve their problem and 

2.) a strong business model that proves you know how you're going to make money. 

To get the right attention, the first place to revisit is your value proposition.

Value proposition development often seems relatively easy but as Michael Skok, General Partner at North Bridge Venture Partners, points out, "On the surface, value propositions seem incredibly straightforward. I'd argue that this is why, in practice, they're often given such short shrift. However, many entrepreneurs lose out due to never truly articulating a compelling value proposition." 

This means this is a great opportunity to do something your competitors aren’t doing!

As Ryan Abrams, entrepreneur in Silicon Wadi points out, "value propositions play an integral role in defining your startup's purpose and validating ideas among your target audience. Directly correlating with the business plan, they quantify the intended market position of your startup and demonstrate the fundamental value of your product(s)/service(s) in the mind of your target audience."

I'm going to throw in another quote just to make the point! "If your value proposition is not clear and well-articulated and backed by a credible business model, you really do not have a pitch," Naveed Khan, VC advisor. 

Is that the third time a charm quote? Have I convinced you yet?

Doing your UVP work means getting to the heart of the idea that you are building your startup around and defining your superpower. What problem is so desperate that it needs solving and what superpower do you have to you solve this problem that makes you the startup to invest in?

It’s good to know that the inability to communicate the problem, your purpose and value clearly and simply is a massive red flag to any VC. You now have the power to avoid this!

They don't have the time or the bandwidth to figure it out for you. An investor will spend on average 3 minutes and 44 seconds reviewing a deck. (Tech Crunch) 

A strong UVP starts with understanding the problem and why it's a problem worth solving. It doesn't start with the solution, and it's not about describing all the feature bells and whistles. If you can't articulate the problem, you might be falling into the death trap of a solution looking to solve something. 

To avoid this and build a strong value prop, the problem needs to be painful enough that a solution is desired once they know that one is available. And you need to clarify in no uncertain terms why you are best placed to solve this against all other competitors (including doing nothing). The harsh reality is that if you can't deliver a 10x promise, customers will typically default to "do nothing" rather than bearing the risk of making a change. 

The 3Ds can be helpful in working out this last part of the value proposition by helping you answer the why you: What unique combination of 

Discontinuous innovation, 

Defensible technology,

and Disruptive business model are you bringing to bear, and what makes it genuinely compelling to your most sceptical customer? But remember, you always have to be looking at this from the customer's point of view. 

A great UVP is about helping make it a simple decision for VCs to buy into your passion because they can attach to the problem and see that they had a powerful solution that clearly stood out. Once they see you understand your superpower and buy into it, at that point, it is about asking questions on the detail.

Remember:

• Please don't skip taking the time and effort on your UVP because it looks easy on the face of it. Make sure you take the time to prioritise this as critical to the process and even go back and revisit it time and time again as you gather more insight into the problem and evolve the product/solution.

• Be okay with the fact this it isn't easy to get correct. Get the right help to articulate this - even the best marketers can struggle. (FYI, no, this isn't a brand exercise as part of your brand promise or logo or even a strapline those things will never replace doing the UVP work.)

• Your UVP is the definition of your superpower. It's your unique point of differentiation. It has to be authentic and it has to be based on reality. Using lots of adjectives doesn't make it a superpower. VCs are on the hunt for super.

Revisiting your UVP can take you out of accidentally letting yourself stay in a disastrous loop of doing the same thing and not getting the result you want. Your superpower is your lifeline to success.

My great client revisited and updated their unique value proposition, actually discovered in the process that their superpower was even stronger than initially realised and are now currently on route to successfully achieving their funding. Immediately after the UVP refresh, they had a different response to their pitch outreach.