The president of Sapphire Ventures explains the 5 top blunders startup founders and entrepreneurs make in pitching to VCs

Sapphire Ventures

Sapphire Ventures President Jai Das

• For startup entrepreneurs, nailing a fundraising pitch to VCs can be a game-changer.
• The funding could propel their startups to new heights, plus there's the potential boost from being endorsed by a high-profile VC firm.
• Jai Das, founder and president of Sapphire Ventures, which has backed tech companies such as Box, DataRobot, DocuSign and Clari, says pitching is really about telling a story - a solid and compelling narrative.
• Das explained the top 5 blunders startup founders and entrepreneurs make in pitching their ideas to VCs.
• Click here for more BI Prime stories.

For startup entrepreneurs, nailing a fund-raising pitch to venture capitalists can be game-changer.

Your startup gets much-needed cash, plus the potential glow of getting the endorsement of a prestigious VC.

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The pitch can be a high-pressure game, in the vein of Shark Tank. Jai Das, founder and president of Sapphire Ventures, which has backed tech companies such as Box, DataRobot, DocuSign and Clari, says pitching is really about telling a story - a solid and compelling narrative.

"It's an art," he told Business Insider. "It's how well you narrate your story, how you create an option that a lot of people get interested in."

Not all startup founders and executives get it, headed. Here are 5 of the top blunders many of them make, based on his long experience as a VC.

Ignoring common-sense or decorum

Chances are there won't be any TV cameras when you make your pitch to a VC, but Das stressed this point: a pitch is a performance. So it's important to focus on some of the basics of a performance.

"Some of these things are just a given, like have a good presence, don't mumble, don't stand in front of the slide deck," he said. "These are easy things that people can do and figure out."

Being sloppy with the numbers

Remember that you'll be presenting to investors for whom numbers are important. A few of them may have even spent their careers working with spreadsheets. So make sure yours make sense.

"Make sure your deck and everything - the financials, the numbers - match up," Das said. "We have had instances where someone has projections on one slide that do not match their financial projections."

"Simple things like that" can derail a pitch, he said. "But a lot of entrepreneurs still make that mistake."

Keep in mind that "people are pretty savvy about these things and they will look into the numbers."

Not having a strong and compelling story

The most important part of your pitch is the story, Das said.

Yes the numbers - your projections for how much revenue, profit your startup will rake in - are important. But you must have a strong and compelling story, Das stressed.

"At the end of the day, you have to have a narrative that attracts people," he said.

The story will typically be about how the startup got started, the challenges it overcame and its market momentum. Das said a compelling story can be about a startup struggling in "a really hard environment with not a lot of money and still growing at 100%."

There are many others, of course. The point is to make it compelling, he said: "If you get people interested in the narrative, then you seal the deal. If you have that, you almost get a term sheet immediately."

Being too rigid and unimaginative with the storytelling

So you have your story down, and maybe you even rehearsed it repeatedly before your presentation. Das has another important tip: Read the room. Be nimble.

In other words, be prepared to adapt your storytelling style, including points you should highlight, to the VCs who are listening to your pitch.

Gathering some intel on the VC firm you're pitching may be necessary for this. Das said it pays to "understand the process of a VC firm, including who will be at the meeting. Is it going to be one partner or 20 partners?"

"You need to be able to understand and figure out who are the decision-makers in the room," he said. "You need to understand where the questions are coming from."

"You can't change the arc of the story what you're trying to build and how you have gotten to where you are," Das said. "But you can definitely change things around a little bit to cater to whoever is in the room. You have to make sure the questions that are nagging someone in the room are answered."

Spin is good - but don't overdo it

But here's an important reminder: tweaking your story is fine, but never lie, Das said.

In many cases, you already have a set story to work with when you face the VCs. Doing some last minute adjustments or even a bit of spin is okay - but don't overdo it.

"Remember people have connections all over the place," he said. "People will backchannel you."

For example, he said, "someone who says, 'Oh, I was chief data scientist and I had a team of 200 people and I did all this stuff for this company like Google or whatever.' We are going to backchannel that because we probably know people from there and they are going to find out exactly what you did or didn't do."

"Lying or making up things about what you did or didn't do" is a bad idea, he added. "Everybody exaggerates. That's human nature but the level of exaggeration in what you say can be so farfetched people will find that out."

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